Warwick Bruce Chapman

Speech to eThekwini Council 29 May 2013

Speaker, what we have seen today in this council is an example of the general malaise affecting this City government, and in this instance specifically, the process by which we review and amend our IDP.

This council is not genuinely interested in real public participation, instead imposing its view on the residents of this city. Mr Speaker, this approach is not altogether dissimilar to your own handling of these council meetings. The rule book is merely a rough guide and you use your majority to make your own rules as you go along.

Mr Speaker, let me provide a few examples.

First, the IDP 2011/12 states the vision of this City as follows:

“By 2020, eThekwini will enjoy the reputation of being Africa’s most caring and liveable city, where all citizens live in harmony.”

However, in 2012/13 something changed, rather surreptitiously, and by its repetition in this IDP confirms it was no error. The last two IDPs reflect a changed vision for our City, and I quote:

“By 2030, eThekwini will be Africa’s most caring and liveable city.”

Now, Mr Speaker, this is interesting for two reasons. First, speaker, the extension, without discussion or motivation of the timeline in our vision by a decade from 2020 to 2030. Clearly, Speaker the ANC realizes that it’s poor track record of delivery crippled by corruption and cronyism has made the achievement of this vision by 2020 impossible.

After all, Mr Speaker, the slums we have built in the form of unserviced transit camps hardly serve as the best example of “caring and liveable”.

Second, how is it that we unilaterally discard the vision of a City “where all citizens live in harmony.” Is this not something so crucial to the spirit of our democracy that we should debate in full the change to our vision to remove this aim? Instead, is it simply edited out.

Speaker, the extra decade is not what is needed to ensure the achievement of this vision. What is required is a change in the attitude of this government. Take, for example, the poor attitude demonstrated by Cllr Nigel Gumede today through his admission of deliberate selective delivery based on political affiliation.

Speaker, the second example draws on the community of Umbilo and the state of the Umbilo Congella Sports Club. This crucial community asset, and the only public hall in the ward, has experienced near destruction as a result of inaction and failure to deliver. If the people of Umbilo were fully and genuinely consulted in the process of establishing regional priorities in the IDP, I assure you that we wouldn’t be waiting until 2014/15 for action to be take in renovating this crucial public facility.

Lastly, Speaker, p178 of this IDP reflects the obligation on this City to ensure “Traffic regulation and supervision in public roads.” As a further demonstration of what I am talking about Mr Speaker, and in spite of community protests against speeding, like the one recently in KwaMashu where school children were being killed, we still have only one mobile speed timing device. Speaker I have brought this failure to deliver to this council’s attention on a repeated basis and the attitude has been to simply ignore what, in the end, is a statutory obligation on this council.

Speaker, the ANC has a 62% majority in this council yet behaves as if it has a 100% majority. Public participation and genuine, meaningful consultation is a crucial component of our democracy. By going through public participation as a check box exercise without any meaningful consultation taking place, the ANC simply wasting the time and money of its residents in what is currently a farce.

Neglected park in Morans Ln, Berea

Speech to eThekwini council on 30 July 2012 in motivation of my Parks Motion.  The motion was voted down despite the support of almost all opposition parties:

The “rapidly changing land use of our City” is evidenced by the urgency with which the Development Planning Department has undertaken the Berea Land Use Management review as part of the Urban Core study in order to better manage the relatively uncontrolled growth of mixed use and commercial uses of our desperately needed residential land.

The “changing priorities of city government” acknowledges the fact that the municipality has a much broader set of responsibilities than merely maintaining the leafy nature of many of our suburbs. This is evidenced by the fact that the Parks department is completely unable to meet its obligations which has resulted in many neglected parks and public open spaces across the City.

Many of these neglected public open spaces are used by criminals, vagrants and as sites for illegal dumping. These activities contribute to the degradation of the surrounding residences, thus significantly affecting the quality of life of many of the people of our city. As a City which emphasizes quality of life, liveability and a caring approach to its inhabitants, I believe we are obliged to investigated proposals which may improve living conditions.

The proposal put forward in this motion takes into account the very changes in land use referred to above, where many residential suburbs, especially in parts of the City like the Berea, are now dominated by mixed and commercial land uses. However, the problem with such land uses being imposed on areas designed for residential purposes is that minimal off-street parking is available – entirely unsuitable for businesses.

The proposal seeks to investigate instances where neglected parks which are bounded by businesses can be adopted by those businesses in exchange for shared use of up to 25% of the area of the park as parking.

The businesses would then enter into a formal MOU with the Parks department which sets out the basis for the maintenance and upgrading of the Park to be shared by the council and the businesses.

The proposal seeks our approval for the Parks Department to investigate the possibility of entering into such partnerships to unlock the mutual benefits of increased off-street parking and improvement maintenance and cleanliness of our parks.

I urge you to support this practical proposal which could improve the quality of life of many people living in our City.

Park in Morans Ln, Berea – used as a dump, taxi parking, building storage, vagrants, copper thieves…

Today’s council agenda included an item requesting the council to support U15 athletes to a international tournament to Daejeon, South Korea and requesting that council approve that two councillor accompany the athletes. The DA requested that the item be amended to remove the two councillors, the ANC voted it down and counter proposed that the number of councillors be increased to 5.

This was my impromptu address to council on the matter:

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We support the event. We support our youth. We support our athletes competing in the international arena. We would have supported the motion as tabled in order to ensure that the young athletes still got the support they need despite the waste of sending two councillors along as well.

We cannot support this amendment because we refuse to support wasting even more funds by sending more councillors on holidays.

What are we telling the citizens of this city present at this meeting and all those we were elected to represent when we waste more of our desperately needed council funds on sending well paid councillors on overseas holidays for no apparent reason?

We are simply wasting money for seemingly no reason but to spite other political parties. I wonder whether this amendment would ever have been tabled had the DA not opposed the sending of two councillors.

Our councillors are among the best paid in the country, we regularly receive clothing, accessories and free tickets from council. Councillors are fed at every meeting we attend and now we must explain to the people of eThekwini, many waiting for delivery because of shortage of funds, that we want to waste hundreds of thousands of rands sending councillors on an overseas trip when their real work is right here in our backyard.

This is not a proposal for councillors to investigate best practice in another municipality abroad. Our councillors will be accompanying athletes abroad. Why?

This is merely the ANC abusing their majority to send some councillors on a holiday. This is a holiday party sponsored by the ANC majority in this council which has been thinly disguised as support for a youth delegation to an international tournament, and we will not support it.

We rest in the knowledge that by the ANC forcing this item through council, the young athletes will still get the support they need but we will not be party to such wasted expenditure.

The eThekwini Municipality is simply not doing enough to stem asset losses due to cable theft. As I have explained before to this council, Cape Town has managed, through a well-resourced metals theft combating unit, strict enforcement, and now this initiative to reduce asset losses due to cable theft to a fraction of what it used to be.

There is no reason whatsoever why we should not be reproducing these successes in eThekwini. We are simply not interested in taking this issue seriously enough to muster the political will required to take the measures which have been shown to work in other parts of the country.

This proposal is quite simple. Given the extent of cable theft in our Metro, it is many orders more cost-effective to leave lights in certain high-theft areas on 24 hours to lower the risk of theft, than it is to replace that length of cable.

We can no longer sit back and do nothing about this economic growth sapping crime. I urge you to support this and any other initiatives which seek to reduce cable theft.

The eThekwini Municipality has, at great expense, installed a fibre optic network known as MetroFibre. Since its conceptual stage, MetroFibre has been envisaged as key to providing more cost effective and more accessible broadband services in the municipality’s attempt to bridge the so-called digital divide.

The Connected Schools project aims, in this initial phase, to connect 86 schools to the Internet in areas like Umlazi, KwaMashu, Phoenix, Inanda, Sydenham and Overport . Quite simply, the more access our learners have to the Internet, the more learning and skills development we are going to see taking place.

This sort of project, once properly implemented and maintained, is an example of the sort of positive interventions which municipalities can make, in partnership with other spheres of government, to effect positive change in the lives of people looking for a way out of poverty. We know that in the 21st century knowledge is power.

Providing access to the Internet means providing access to the single largest repository of Information on the earth. Let’s do much much more of it in the years to come.