This Council Speech by Cape Town Mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, was delivered on Thursday, 26 January 2023

Speaker,

City colleagues,

Members of the public and guests,

Members of the media,

Goodmorning, Molweni, Goeiemore, As salamu alaikum

As Council reconvenes, I wish you all a very blessed 2023.

As we mark the beginning of a new year, we also know that South Africa faces great and growing challenges – challenges that threaten our nation's economy, the livelihoods of so many, and threaten our hopes for the future.

At times of great peril, anxiety and fear, it is perhaps important just to remind ourselves what it is that we are trying to do here, and how important our work is.

There are so many in our country only in public office for personal gain.

But in Cape Town our purpose in government is for the public's gain.

Our purpose is simple to express: We want Cape Town to be a "city of hope" in South Africa. A place that shows that South Africa can work, despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

We aim to lift people out of poverty and into work.

We aim to make our city safer for every resident.

We aim to set the highest standards for basic service delivery in the whole country, to be honest when we do not live up to this standard, and do better.

We aim to drive out, and keep out, the pervasive sense of failure and decline that has crept in to the streets, homes and hearts of so much of our country.

We aim to show every resident – particularly the poorest residents – that they are cared for by a government committed to seeing their lives improve.

In Cape Town, we hope to show the difference that good governance makes, and to be that beacon of hope, so that in time, our country can thrive.

In that vein, today is an important day as we:

update residents and Council on the details of our three-phase procurement plan for load-shedding protection;

table the City's over-arching spatial policy to drive meaningful economic growth and unstitch apartheid's spatial legacy in our city; and

adopt Adjustment Budget shifts to make Cape Town more resilient in the face of unbridled national state failure

We also have the City's 2021/22 Annual Report on the agenda.

I hope that Council will join me in celebrating the 'Clean Audit' opinion from the Auditor General.

My thanks go to every dedicated official who gets up every day to serve Capetonians with pride and integrity, as we build the City of Hope for all.

Improving the audit outcome to clean audit status is no easy task, and is not achieved in one year. It has been a multi-year project.

I wish to give special honourable mentions to Cllr Siseko Mbandezi, Ald Ian Neilson, Mayor Plato, Cllr Yagyah Adams, Cllr Siva Moodley, and the members of the Municipal Public Accounts Committee, as well the Chief Financial Officer, Mr Jacoby, and his entire budgets and audit team, the project management, contract management, engineering support and the procurement teams; and finally the City Manager, Mr Mbandazayo. They all deserve a round of applause.

Here in Cape Town, unlike in so many other places, the public can rest assured that their money is being well stewarded for broad public benefit, and particularly in service of the poorest residents. We will never allow the mismanagement and corruption that has brought South Africa to its knees to ever get a foothold here. Wherever we see it, we will cut it out without hesitation.

Make no mistake, a clean audit is not the beginning and the end of the work of government.

But excellence in governance and sound financial management is a pre-requisite for excellence in delivery for all. It is also a pre-requisite for growing public confidence in a government and in a city, province or country.

When people know that services are delivered to all, when money is well spent, they tend to vote with their feet, before voting with their pens.

The Financial Mail last week posed the question on its cover, "The great semigration: should you join the exodus to Cape Town?"

Of course we are aware of the record numbers of people that want to move their homes and their businesses to Cape Town. And we see it as a huge vote of confidence in our City.

It is fantastic that people are choosing to move here instead of emigrating to other countries. So we say: bring your skills and set up your businesses here. Help us to grow the local economy and create new jobs to help people into work and out of poverty over time.

We won't accept as our destiny, the ubiquitous state failure we see every day - on policing, on rail, in the economy, on electricity, in our ports, in our post offices, and more.

But in this long litany of failure, the failure of our national government to ensure a reliable power supply is the most glaring, and the most devastating.

On Sunday, Eskom projected that South Africa will be placed on permanent stage 2 or 3 load shedding for the next two years.

Last week we hit stage 6 load-shedding – more than eight hours a day without power. Load-shedding is at its worst since rolling blackouts started in 2008, and we are still in the height of summer. Stage 8 has become a realistic prospect in the winter months ahead.

President Ramaphosa cancelled his trip to Davos apparently to deal with the crisis, but was unable to give South Africa any reassurance that there was a serious plan.

He did announce that he would bring back Eskom engineers who were pushed out years ago. But we have to ask: why were they pushed out in the first place?

He also announced that government would start importing power from neighbouring countries. What an embarrassment that it has come to that.

Otherwise, the President said, his hands are tied up in red tape: "When we are now supposed to do things, there is this regulation, law and processes. When Eskom has to buy a boiler, they have to go to Treasury and get permission, it is a long process."

Of course he is correct. But he is also the President. He has the power to untangle this bureaucracy. Indeed, we have seen no meaningful achievements by the Red Tape Unit set up in the Presidency, and announced in February 2022.

Crucially, the President has retained an Energy Minister who has failed to advance new power generation procurement, and succeeded only in bullying the Eskom CEO out of his office.

Incredibly, Eskom has still not begun the recruitment process to replace Mr de Ruyter – despite having received his resignation in mid-December. This means Eskom will almost certainly be without a CEO from March, just as the colder months start to bite and the demand for power goes up.

I am afraid that the President's lack of firm leadership does not bode well. And it pains me to say that he has utterly failed to confront the crisis with any sense of urgency.

Here in Cape Town, we will not go gently into that good night, as the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas famously wrote; we will rage, rage against the dying of the light.

We will not be forever wedded to Eskom's dwindling supply alone. We will seek our own independent supply.

We will not be forever wedded to their crushing, hyper-inflationary increases, even as families struggle to make ends meet in this load-shedding-shattered economy.

We look forward to a future of cheaper renewable power meaning cheaper power for consumers.

Kwanele ngoEskom, sikhangela iinkampani ezino-kusithengi-sela umbane nge-xabiso eli-phantsi.

[Enough with Eskom, we are searching for companies who can sell us cheaper electricity.]

We will not accept thriving businesses going bust and laying off workers.

We will not accept powerless households struggling to keep their last food edible, their vital appliances from breaking, and their children prepared for school.

We won't accept the damage to infrastructure – to sewer and water systems – nor the rising theft of state and private property under the cover of darkness.

We won't accept that the billions looted from Eskom through state capture and cadre deployment – is the ball and chain that sinks us all. We won't go gently into that dark night.

And so Speaker, it is with a sense of renewed determination, that I can update residents and Council on the detail of our three-phase procurement for Load-shedding Protection, with the goal of protecting residents from the first four stages of Eskom's load-shedding.

Dit is ons doelwit om Kaapstad teen beurtkrag te beskerm totdat Eskom fase 5 bereik. Eers dan sal ons moontlik fase 1-beurtkrag hoef in te stel in gebiede waar die Stad krag voorsien. Ons beoog om beurtkrag mettertyd heeltemal af te skaf.

We have already made much progress on the first of our three-phase procurement for Load-shedding protection, with a 200MW procurement of renewable energy concluded last year.

Tenders are to be awarded in the coming months, with the procurement now in the evaluation phase of technical proposals received from IPPs.

I can also confirm that we are working with the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on grid integration studies to determine when and where these IPPs will feed power into Cape Town's grid.

The second of the three-phase procurement for load-shedding protection takes the form of our Power Heroes programme.

The initiative is based on paying residents incentives for voluntary energy savings, which will entail automated remote switching off of power-intensive devices at peak times. The 'demand response tender' for this programme, launched in October last year, is currently in evaluation phase, and will also be awarded within the coming months.

Finally, the third phase of procurement will be launched this February. This will take the form of a Dispatchable Energy tender, expected to yield at least 500MW for our grid.

This tender will not only focus on renewable energy, as the first phase of our Load-shedding Protection Plan did, but will include all-important dispatchable technologies, such as battery storage and gas to power. These power sources need to generate power for a significant portion of the day to support our load-shedding protection efforts. Importantly, these dispatchable supply sources need not be located in a City-supply area.

We are expecting enough progress on this 3-Phase procurement – and our other deliverables – to provide at least four stages of load-shedding protection within three years.

Procuring 500MW will go a long way to ending load shedding over time, given that a single load-shedding stage requires the City to shutdown around 60MW.

We will add future phases to this plan in time, potentially including more renewables procurement and utility-scale battery storage.

Last February I first set out this plan to end load shedding over time.

Nearly a year on, two major tenders have been issued, have closed, and are in assessment phase; and the biggest one will be issued in a matter of weeks.

Spread the word: if you have a dispatchable power project, you better get ready to submit a bid to the City of Cape Town when our tender opens!

We are on track for the plan we set out last year.

We are also doing what we must to keep our municipal generation projects in good order, including an additional allocation today for the extra maintenance of Steenbras which is working overtime.

But we're not only buying power from big utility-scale IPPs. We're also buying power from every private resident who wants to sell it to us, and from every business, or school, who wants to sell it to us.

Last week we obtained an essential exemption from National Treasury allowing us to avoid the competitive bidding processes to buy power from households and businesses.

Now there is no obstacle in our way to actually paying customers for as much excess power as they can produce.

The message is clear: If you've got kilowatts to sell, we want 'em all. And if you want to be paid cash for your power, now you can be – just tell us if you want it by EFT, e-wallet, SnapScan, or Apple Pay.

But seriously, this is a first in South Africa, and demonstrates both our commitment to ending load shedding over time, and to being a centre of innovation on the continent.

Cash Payments to commercial customers will be possible before June and, within the year, for any Capetonian with the necessary City-approved generation capacity. We will also pay these customers an incentive over and above the NERSA-approved tariff.

This is a great time for Capetonians to go solar. This is what we mean when we say #PowertothePeople. And this is the difference: In one case, you pay higher prices and you get even less power and more load-shedding. And in the other case, we pay you for your power, and, together, we end load shedding over time.

Adjustment Budget

Speaker, today we table the adjustment budget, which takes a range of resilience measures to protect our city from national state failure.

The budget includes R117 million for fuel – driven by rising diesel costs and the need to constantly run generators to keep basic services infrastructure going.

We are further buying generators worth over R17m, as we steadily install back-up power at our critical facilities.

An amount of R20 million is set aside for additional maintenance at Steenbras to keep this load-shedding protection facility in tip-top shape.

There are several further items in the budget relating to security from theft and vandalism at City facilities, as well as at construction sites, to prevent the derailing of projects due to safety threats.

National government failure is not the only external factor impacting on the City, and we are also increasing our resilience to climate change, with R6.6m being invested in coastal infrastructure to protect the city against beach erosion, storm surges and sea level rise.

There is also provision for year-on-year growth in the budget for water infrastructure over 3 years as part of our New Water Programme to diversify supply sources.

Besides these resilience measures, there are several items to enhance services, including:

R33m for mowing requirements

R16m for top-up cleaning on main arterial routes and CBDs

R35m for the pothole repair programme, with R100m more to come in the main budget

The budget further reflects our ease of doing business agenda, with R10.8m more to improve the online Development applications system – known as DAMS.

Finally, it is of great encouragement to announce that this R32m writedown in capital spending – at just 0,19% of capex budget – is the smallest in history.

Importantly, the writedown results from technical changes in the timelines on bridging finance from national government to Urban Mobility, and not due to poor planning or execution of infrastructure delivery.

We said last year that capital budgets must be spent – it is the first job of a city to be constantly investing in critical infrastructure, and caring for that which we have.

MSDF

Speaker, on Council's agenda today is the Municipal Spatial Development Framework (MSDF), the over-arching spatial policy of our city, alongside the various district spatial plans.

This is a major five-year update, and replaces the 2018 MSDF.

The MSDF and district plans – a result of extensive public participation – represent our policy efforts to deliver transit-oriented densification.

It also sets the framework for more affordable housing, close to economic activity, along public transport routes.

It encourages development in the urban core, and furthers our project of breaking down apartheid's spatial legacy, which still casts such a long shadow.

This includes various important economic nodes, from the Inner City, Century City, Tygervalley, Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha, Phillippi, Atlantis, Somerset West, and Cape Town's second CBD and major public investment project, Bellville.

We are also pursuing the regeneration of underperforming inner-city business nodes such as Salt River, Maitland, Goodwood, Parow and Athlone.

In closing, we look forward to our second full year in office ahead.

We are determined to deliver on our priorities of ending load shedding over time,

making Cape Town safer,

cleaning up our waterways and public places,

releasing more land for affordable housing,

fighting for the control of rail,

doing the basics better and investing in infrastructure, and

working to grow the economy to help more people into jobs and out of poverty over time.

I thank you.

Source: City Of Cape Town