Honourable Premier, Cde Noxolo Kieviet

STATEMENT BY

NELSON MANDELA BAY EXECUTIVE MAYOR, COUNCILLOR ZANOXOLO WAYILE, ON THE VISIT OF PREMIER NOXOLO KIEVIET AND HER EXECUTIVE COUNCIL 20 OCTOBER 2010

Honourable Premier, Cde Noxolo Kieviet

Members of the Executive Council

Members of the Mayoral Committee

Officials of the Province and the Municipality

Members of the Media

Ladies and gentlemen

Thank you Honourable Premier for your kind words.

Presidential clarion call

President Jacob Zuma declared 2010 the “Year of Working Together to Speed Up Effective Service Delivery”. The President also alluded to the task of building a new contingent of public sector cadres who will ensure that government works better, smarter and faster. It is within this context of working together and the co-operative governance principle of there being one government with three spheres, that our Provincial counterparts and ourselves interact and meet with each other on regular basis.

NelsonMandelaBay has many challenges and these can only be addressed by the strengthened working relations among the three spheres of government along with other social partners and stakeholders. And we therefore welcome the visit and interaction with the Premier and her team.

Briefing overview

Over the past two days we have briefed our Honourable Premier, her cabinet and the senior officials of the Province on our state of affairs. This included an objective report on the progress of service delivery including water, sanitation, refuse collection, electricity, integrated human settlements, primary health services, our road and transportation network, safety and security, and our state of governance, financial management and public participation initiatives. We also briefed the Honourable Premier and her team on the prevailing socio-economic conditions of NelsonMandelaBay, sports, arts, culture and heritage in the Bay, and economic development strategies.

In this regard, we have briefed the Premier of our plan to address these challenges including amongst other things some bold initiatives that we have taken since we assumed office in November 2009. These include, but are not limited to:

•100 Days institutional strategic turnaround programme

•Mayoral Outreach

•IDP and Budget community consultation programme

•Economic Development Summit

•Boxing tournament

•Mayoral Cup Challenge

•2010 FIFA World Cup and the legacy plans

•Northern Areas uprising commemoration

•Demolition of Apartheid infrastructure at Zosa Street and its rebuilding to restore human dignity

•War on Hunger

•Special budget interventions for vulnerable groups

All these plans and programme had one thing in common, that is to unite all our people across cultures, languages and ethnic backgrounds so that we build a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, prosperous, united and caring society.

We collectively discussed our challenges and found synergy as to how we can, together, decisively address such challenges. We agreed that, as a government, we are one family.

And just as in any family, we will not be without our internal challenges from time to time. But these minor differences in approaches do not make us separate entities - we firmly remain the limbs of the same body of governance that is striving to ensure a better life for all.

Intergovernmental relations issues:

•Finance

Among the issues that we discussed was, of course, our accounts with each other. In this regard, our accounting officials are consistently engaging with one another and the necessary financial and administrative processes are being duly followed.

We emphasized the point that cash flow challenges is, at present, a global phenomenon that has affected all municipalities in the Eurozone and North America. We are not immune to this in the aftermath of the global economic meltdown.

•Housing

With regard to housing, the Province has agreed to fully support and assist us, as their only Metro, to achieve level 2 accreditation with the national department of Human Settlements, so that housing delivery can be fasttracked. We noted that we still have a housing backlog of 87 000 and this accreditation will go a long way in addressing this challenge.

•Water as a source of development

Among the more interesting issues that we discussed was our water development programme which seeks to address our drought-stricken conditions. In this regard, we will be jointly approaching national government to support and fund the desalinization plant. We cannot be every year going through water restrictions due to the annual drought that befalls our region. We must take decisive action now to minimize water wastage, given that water is a source of development and its scarcity will seriously retard development and service delivery.

•Education

With regard to education, we shall be speeding up the finalization of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) with Province, as part of the strengthening of intergovernmental relations. We reiterate that education is a key factor in the development of this region, and has been identified as such by the President in his State of the Nation Address. We therefore have to work very closely with Province to ensure that our children receive quality education at our public schools. In this regard, we have briefed our Provincial counterparts on the Mayoral Task Team on Education that we have established to assist in addressing education challenges.

•Mayoral Task Teams

We further briefed the Premier and her cabinet on the various other initiatives that we have taken such as the Mayoral Cup Challenge and the Political task Teams that we have set up to address issues such as heritage, social backlogs, infrastructure backlogs, and the building of a non-racial, non-sexist and united society.

•Waste management

With regard to refuse collection, we have agreed to undertake a study of national and international best-practice to see how such systems can be replicated here in NelsonMandelaBay. We cited places such as Durban, Germany and South Korea who have made positive advances in this field. We are happy to report that Province will be forwarding our Municipality to be part of the national waste management programme. This has short, medium and long term spin-offs and benefits.

•Electricity

We noted that electricity remained a major challenge in the region (and the rest of the country). We will thus be jointly engaging with Eskom and relevant national departments to ensure that the limitation with respect to electricity does not become a hindrance to development.

•EIAs

The Province and ourselves also agreed to fasttrack the processing of EIAs, without diluting the due diligence. To this end, we have agreed to host a joint session where we shall identify priority programmes which are stifled by EIA processes.

•Health

On the issue of integrated health services, we can confirm that a meeting will be held by the end of this week between delegations of the Province and the Municipality which will provide direction on this matter, including finding common ground on the thorny issue of the provincialisation of health services.

•Safety & Security and crime

Our interactions also noted safety and security as a priority area, and cited the issue of gangsterism, particularly in the city’s Northern Areas as a prime area of concern. We have agreed to hold an urgent inter-ministerial meeting that would include the provincial Departments of Education, Social Development, DSRAC, Health, Safety and Liaison and the Municipality that will construct a strategy around this taking into account social challenges. We are especially happy to note that the Premier has declared the PE Northern Areas as a special Premier’s Project. We are also pleased with the commitment received from the German government of investing R60 million on crime prevention projects in Helenvale.

•Rejuvenation of socio-economic programmes in the aftermath of the global economic meltdown

As the Municipality, we also took the opportunity to raise the issues of Bayworld, shortage of staff at our libraries, the Mendi Bottle Store and the Coega Development. On all these and other areas, our Province has agreed to provide consistent and constructive feedback. We discussed Mthombo, the rejuvenation of the automobile sector, the revitalisation and upgrading of the manganese project, among other programmes. We have agreed that MEC Jonas and the Executive Mayor will be urgently meeting to discuss all these areas and provide a concrete road map and implementation plan. Our plans will also attempt to leverage South Africa’s bilateral and multilateral trade agreements with Brazil, China, India, Egypt, SADC countries and the European Union.

Ensuring accountability among all spheres

The thrust of Outcome #9 of Government’s Programme of Action is to ensure that we have a responsive, accountable, and efficient local government system, and all Mayors including myself have signed a Delivery Agreement which will be used as a measurement tool of accountability and performance. In terms of this, all three spheres must operate through a single window of coordination for government to forge cohesion and strategic alignment among key sectors, for the joint implementation of Outcome #9.

It is in this context that we meet with our Provincial counterparts and will continue to do so so that we fully deliver on all outputs of the Delivery Agreement and the promises we have made to our people.

Conclusion

I want to take this opportunity to thank the Premier, her cabinet and her officials for having taken the time to visit us and share and recommit to our collective programmes as a caring government. We also take this opportunity to wish all our matriculants, and all other learners of all other grades, every success in their final matric examinations. Remember, only hard work will pay off! We call upon religious fraternity, parents, teachers, communities and government to work together in ensuring that we not only improve the pass rate, but the general standard of education.

We also salute EP Kings on reaching the play-offs for promotion to Currie Cup's premier division and call upon all to show their support over both the legs against the Pumas. We applaud the work that inspiration of Anele Pamba, Cheeky Watson, Honourable Cedric Frolick, MP and all the others who are attached to the team. let's all go out and show our support.

In short,

we discussed all the areas of governance and service delivery,

we set up processes, structures and timeframes within which to act decisively,

and we fully recommitted ourselves to work together,

to work smarter,

to work harder,

to work faster,

to fasttrack service delivery,

so that together

we can ensure a better life for all!

Working together, we can do more!

CLLR ZANOXOLO WAYILE

EXECUTIVE MAYOR