Warwick Bruce Chapman

The Speaker – eThekwini Council
Councillor Logie Naidoo
City Hall
DURBAN
16 April 2012
Dear Mr Speaker

NOTICE OF MOTION IN TERMS OF RULE OF ORDER 13

This council noting:

1. the rapidly changing land use in parts of our City;
2. the changing priorities of our City government;
3. the significant challenge of maintaining and cleansing all parks and public open spaces;
4. the poor state of maintenance and cleanliness of many parks and public open spaces; and – that neglected parks and public open spaces are often used as bases for criminal activity.

Resolves that the Parks department be mandated to within 3 months of this meeting:

1. Investigate and report on the feasibility of entering into Public-Private Partnerships with businesses located adjacent to or across from public parks or public open spaces whereby:
   • businesses share the costs of maintaining, cleansing and lighting the parks
   • in exchange a portion of the park not exceeding 25% be converted to strictly managed parking

for use by the businesses in a manner approved by the Parks department.

1. Report on any bylaw changes which may need to take place to allow for such an initiative.
2. Identify 5 pilot sites for a 1 year pilot after which a framework and guidelines be drawn up for this to be replicated across eThekwini.

PROPOSER Councillor Warwick Chapman
SECONDER Councillor Rick Crouch

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:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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 events of today have provoked angry racial attacks from ANC and COSATU supporters who have tried desperately to portray blacks in the DA as sellouts to a white party. Between now and 2014 they will become more desperate.

To all of those who chose stones or the race card today to attack the most diverse party in South Africa, watch the DA unfold before you as a truly non-racial party which will be lead by any South African regardless of race – because they are the best person to lead us.

Watch us win Gauteng and the Northern Cape in 2014 and watch us push the ANC to the brink in the North West. Watch us win Johannesburg, Tshwane, Port Elizabeth and many other local municipalities in 2016.

In all these provincial and local governments, watch us eradicate corruption, improveme job creation and ramp up service delivery.”

Helen Zille recently said:
“Why are there “No More Mandelas”? Why is it that most current ANC leaders seek to entrench division rather than promote reconciliation? The answer is that this formula suits them well. All they have to do to keep winning elections, is to divide people on the basis of race, and keep them hating each other. It is the easiest recipe in politics for short-term power, and long-term disaster. And, as Nelson Mandela said: “We have to be better than that”. That is the most difficult challenge of politics.”

It is easy to attack using populism and hate and much harder to address the real problems plaguing our society. We need all the support we can get on the orad to 2014.

The ANC attempted to bribe DA councillors in the Western Cape to move to the ANC. Cllr Thobile Dyonta was approached with an offer of 2 month’s salary to resign his seat in Breede Valley. Thobile met with ANC provincial leader Marius Fransman who tried to persuade him to give up his seat to the ANC. In Bitou, Cllr Nevelle de Waal was approached 6 times, offered a bribe of R900000 in cash, and any position he wanted.

Download the “Project Reclaim” Dossier here.

See the DA press release and the Politics Web coverage.

The DA’s understanding of redress begins with recognising that poverty and inequality are the inescapable realities of life for the majority of SA citizens, and further that much of this reality is the consequence of our nation’s divided and discriminatory history. Statutory measures designed to discriminate against people of colour and to advantage a racial minority were part of not only the legacy of apartheid but of our colonial history too. The DA’s commitment to the open, opportunity society for all means that we cannot pretend that this history didn’t happen, nor can we just assume that our 1996 Constitution which enshrines equality will produce a more fair and just society without systematic policy interventions on our part.

Redress means a number of things for the DA. This paper sets out some of the key components of our position but is, of necessity, not all that could be said.

1. We recognise that achieving human dignity and human rights for all are issues for which all DA public representatives must be seen to be passionately committed. Actions or statements by organisations or individuals which abuse or devalue the worth of any of our fellow South Africans must be condemned without reservation. The DA must be seen to be at the forefront of any campaign which defends our Constitutional rights.

2. Practical measure to achieve redress include various forms of structural intervention to level the economic playing fields between rich and poor. This means supporting budget allocations in the areas which can eliminate the inter-generational transmission of poverty and inequality – especially in education, health, transport and housing. This means supporting dedicated funding and programmes which by transform the quality of people’s lives and which give them enhanced opportunities to achieve their own and their children’s potential. The delivery of quality and accessible public health care and schooling must be imperatives for the DA wherever we are in government.

3. The DA is opposed to the further racialising of society but we are supportive of creating economic opportunities for all those who are currently disadvantaged in terms of their employment skills or access to business contracts. Structural measures which rely simply on racial categories are crude and destroy national reconciliation and cohesion and the DA will look for other means of creating opportunities for all than the currently favoured BEE legislation. We need to support the efforts of local entrepreneurs, for small businesses and for companies which reflect SA’s diversity without resorting to racial bean counting or quotas. In terms of preferential procurement we need to create space for small emergent companies to compete and win market share against larger more established entities provided that the quality and efficiency of service delivery are not compromised.

4. Being committed to redress also means tackling the symbolic and very visible ways our society used to reflect the relative advantage of the few over the many. Whether in the naming of public places or institutions, or the celebration of national events and festivals, we need to seek the most inclusive solutions wherever possible. Names and places must reflect our truly rainbow heritage and become a celebration of our diversity not the cause of further division and racial enmity.

5. Ensuring food security for our people means protecting commercial agricultural production, but the DA supports creating opportunities for people from all communities to achieve access to farming skills and land. Opening up land ownership to all our citizens must go hand in hand with measures which will promote individual land ownership, enhanced agricultural productivity and ensuring that small-scale farmers have access to larger markets.

Mark Steele MPL is a DA member of the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Legislature and was previously an MP in the National Assembly.