Speech by the Executive Mayor: Mr. Thabo Makunyane
Date:  25 February 2005

Mr. Speaker
Fellow Councillors,
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Media,
Comrades and
Compatriots Distinguished Guests.

Today we meet at the sunset of the 10th anniversary of our freedom.  We enter the Second Decade of freedom fully confident that we are on track and that our peoples lives have taken a decisive turn for the better.  We have taken the first steps towards building our dream, a dream that all South Africans can share and be proud of the dream of a South Africa unshackled by the legacy of apartheid, the dream of a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society.

Commenting on the tragedy of September 11

Tony Blair once said:

“One illusion has been shattered… that we can have the good life of the west irrespective of the state of the rest of the world… the dragons teeth are planted in the fertile soil of wrongs unrighted, of disputes left to fester for years… of poverty and deprivation”

It was as if he was echoing the words of our Reconstruction and Development Programme that say

            “No political democracy can survive and flourish if the mass of the people remain in poverty, without land, without tangible prospects for a better life”

It is therefore our solemn duly, as the elected torchbearers of this democratic dispensation in Polokwane to work together, united in action, to eradicate poverty and inequality and to build a better life for all our people.

Almost 50 years ago on the 26 June 1955 men and women from all over South Africa, from all walks of life met in Kliptown at the Congress of the People to spell out their dream of a South Africa that they wanted to see, A South Africa that they could all strive to build sparing neither strength nor effort.  These were the men and women who together wrote and adopted the freedom charter, the document that had since become the inspiration of every freedom loving South African.

Since then generations of freedom fighters have struggled and sacrificed for the realisation of this dream.  The Freedom Charter.  In 1994 that dream was further elaborated in the Reconstruction and Development Programme that laid out the National Democratic Programme for the transformation of our country into a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society.

Over the last 10 years, Democratic forces have succeeded in beginning with this process of transformation.  They have succeeded in building a national consensus on the need for unity in action in striving to build a democratic and just South Africa that belongs to all its residents – black and white.  It is this consensus that is enshrined in our National Constitution.

But this programme further requires us, as the elected torchbearers of this process, to embrace the core values and principles of a people – centred, people-driven and gender sensitive transformation process.  To mobilise, and organise our people to take charge of the process of transformation – to drive it in the direction that will serve the interests of all South Africans united in their diversity.

To this end it is necessary to start by effecsting fundamental changes to the state machinery to serve the purpose of social transformation.  It is necessary to direct the ethos, the doctrines the composition and style of the state machinery to serve the interests of all South Africans.

But while carrying out these tasks of transformation we also have to act with our people to change their lives for the better, to build the infrastructure that will meet their basic needs for water, for electricity, transport, housing, health care education, sports and recreation and many more.  In this the backlogs are still enormous, the legacy of apartheid still lies heavily on our peoples shoulders.

But Mr. Speaker, we cannot successfully carry out these tasks if the resources to do it, are not assured.  We must therefore also work to engage all South Africans in the task of building our economy to create more wealth and economic opportunities for our people.

As part of Local Government we are the sphere of Government that is closest to the people. Being in day to day dynamic contact with our people, we are therefore looked upon to turn these dreams into reality.  Our people from

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Ga-Manamela to Masealama, from Sepanapudi to Ga-Hlahla, the workers, the unemployed, the landless rural masses, the petty business operators, men, women and children, the youth and the disabled, black and white all turn to us for support in changing their lives for the better.

It was out of this analysis of the key tasks of transformation that, as Polokwane Municipality, we came up with our Integrated Development Plan to tackle the challenges of reconstruction and development.  In Summary as a Municipality we saw our tasks as being categorised into four key performance areas.

1)   To meet the basic needs of our people for water, sanitation, roads, sports and recreation environment, housing etc.

2)   To promote Local Economic Development, to create wealth and economic opportunities.

3)   To mobilise and empower our people, to take an active part in the process of transforming their lives for the better.

4)   To transform the municipal machinery to serve the interests of all residents.

In carrying out these interrelated tasks attached  to these key performance areas, at all times we must take cue from the National and Provincial priorities as outlined in the state of the Nation and state of the Province addresses by the President and the Premier.  Our Integrated Development Plan must therefore serve to advance the priorities of the Provincial Growth and Development Strategy.

Our programmes, which must be economically, socially, institutionally and environmentally sustainable, also guided by the core values and principles of the RDP in that they must be people – centred, demand-responsive people driven, and gender-sensitive.

Today we table for adoption by this house report cards of how we have performed relative to the tasks that our people have placed before us in these four key performance areas.  We table the Annual Performance Report for the financial year 2003-2004 and the Half Yearly Performance Report for the year 2004-2005 in line with the stipulations of the Municipal Finance Management Act.

It would be impossible in this address to capture everything in these reports, but allow me just to outline a few highlights in each key Performance Area.

Our Mission is to build prosperity to eradicate poverty and to promote social political and economic empowerment of all our people through delivery of quality services, community participation and smart administration.

The central feature of poverty, as we see it, is the lack of access to basic services. Therefore in carrying out this mission we have taken as our first priority, to tackle the backbone of the legacy of apartheid, to address the massive infrastructure backlogs that have denied our people the basic services of water, sanitation, electricity, proper roads, housing and sport and recreation facilities.

This we see as the centre-piece of our strategy to eradicate poverty and to build a better life for all.

In the financial year 2003-2004 we carried out 63 rural water projects which resulted in the creation of over 1500 temporary job opportunities and extended the service to more than 30 000 households.  In addition we continued to deliver an average of 8000 litres of free Diesel to communities to pump water from local boreholes.

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We also completed the Library and Office Centre in Moletjie which will come into operation in April this year.  This facility when fully operational will offer not only Library services to the communities but also a local municipal service centre and an ESKOM paypoint for Eskom customers.  In addition to these the Post Office will also establish operations at the centre.  These are all efforts to improve access to services and to improve the quality of life in the area.

In 2004 we have also commenced with the restructuring of our Waste Management services as part of our call to provide a clean and healthy environment for our people.  This restructuring which is still continuing will see the improvement of street cleaning services in our CBDs, the proper management of our landfill site and the elimination of environmentally hazardous practice of illegal dumping sites and transfer stations.  It will also see the introduction of new services in the CBDs in Mankweng and the City.

In 2004 we also completed over 800 housing units in Hospital View, Sebayeng and Nobody Mothapo. We must state here that Housing is not yet our core function, but is would be impossible for us to act with our people to build a better life when they have been waiting years for houses that have been allocated to them as far back as 1997.  We therefore  took it upon ourselves to approach the Department of Local Government and Housing to give us the go ahead and the resources to complete these projects that have been stuck for so long.  We can therefore say without fear of contradiction that we have gone beyond the call of duty to ensure that our people get the services that they deserve.

In the electricity field discussions with EKSOM to work from the same programme are still continuing at the Provincial level.  Progress has been registered on the ground with the Electrification of some villages by ESKOM but we believe that there is still a lot of room for improvement.  Within the city and Seshego we have worked to improve household access to Electricity Vending Machine by installing more of them in various areas – this has resulted in the reduction of time and costs of buying electricity.

In these and other areas like sports and recreation, safety and security and others our aim is to reduce our peoples vulnerability and to support their livelihoods by continually improving access to basic quality services on a sustainable basis.

LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The strategic objective of this cluster of programmes is to create wealth jobs and other economic opportunities for our people.

We aim to do this by:

1)      Attracting new investments and retaining existing ones

2)      Promoting the development of SMMEs

3)      Human Resource Development

4)      Supporting sustainable livelihood initiatives of our people.

By merely looking around at the construction work that is going on around the city today and those completed in the last financial year,  it is obvious to anyone that a lot is being invested in Polokwane.  Between June 2003 and December 2004 over R200m has been invested in construction in the city alone.  This has resulted in the creation of 100s of job opportunities and other economic opportunities for our people.  The establishment of New Major Supply Centres will also contribute to the strengthening of Polokwane as major trading hub not only in the province but in the SADC area.

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In 2004 we also opened the Doors at Itsoseng Entrepreneur Development Centre.  By June 2004 15 Mathulatsatsing were operating at the centre.  Today we have over 60 ranging from welders to carpenters, printers to electronics repairers and tailors.  With the completion of Phase III of this major entrepreneur hive we hope to accommodate over 100 emerging entrepreneurs who will be trained in the basic skills of running a successful business.

At the Centre we are also negotiating with the Department of Labour for accreditation as a skills development centre to extend its services to the vast army of the unemployed to equip them with skills necessary to enter the job market.

Our SMME promotion strategy is premised on the belief that local small and medium enterprises are the sheet anchor of our local economy.  Their strength underpins our local economy.  It is therefore our duty, as a developmental municipality to support and to nurture this basic source of local sustenance.  But in doing so we must also work to correct the historical imbalances that resulted in the marginalisation of vast sections of the local population.

In our Procurement policies we have also prioritised local Historically Disadvantaged business.  In our procurement of goods and services in the 2003-2004 financial year 15,5% of our purchases was done from Historically Disadvantaged Companies and 84.4% of our tenders were awarded to the same.  In the Half Year to December 2004 26,5% of purchases and 85% of tenders went to these Historically marginalized companies.  In total R94 million went  to 359 HDI companies in 2003-2004 and so far in 2004-2005 R70 million has gone to 420 historically marginalized companies.  WE ARE ON TRACK.

As a Municipality, we are also a major player in the local economy.  We shall always strive to work with all parties to create more opportunities for all local businesses.  We have investigated several possible areas of growth and indications are that vast opportunities still exist in the areas of agro-processing tourism and mineral beneficiation.  Our doors are open to anyone who would want to venture into these areas.

Mr. Speaker again our obligation to our people calls upon us to direct our attention to those vast number of our people who are trapped in the second economy.  The street vendors and the unemployed who continue to eke a meagre living on the edges of the formal economy.  Over the past years we have had numerous consultations with various groups in this sector.  Out of these consultations we have agreed that one way in which we can support their livelihood strategies is to provide facilities for informal street vendors in Mankweng and various locations in the city.  These facilities will  enable these traders to do their business in safe and hygienic conditions without endangering the health of their clients and other businesses.

We will therefore be building hawker facilities at the Limpopo Mall, Polokwane Bus Terminus, African Market in Joubert Street and in Mankweng.

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EMPOWERMENT OF COMMUNITIES

Mr. Speaker our multi pronged programme of Reconstruction and Development must be in line with the call of the freedom charter that says  “the people shall Govern”

The Reconstruction and Development programme tells us that “Development is not just about  delivery of goods and services to a passive citizenry – it is about active involvement and growing empowerment.  “ in the true spirit of the slogan “Nothing about us without us”.

The constitution also calls upon local government to “ encourage the involvement of local communities and community organisation in the affairs of local government”

To carry out this task we have to work to mobilise and empower our people to “expand their assets and capabilities to participate in, negotiate with, influence control and hold accountable institution that affect their lives”. (World Bank)

To this end we have established ward committees in 32 of our 35 wards, as well as a Public Participation Unit to coordinate their work and to provide administrative back up.  In this year we will further elaborate this mechanism to establish local Sector Fora to enable municipal wide consultation on services like water, Energy and Transport.  These ward committees are also taking active part in the implementation of projects through project steering committees.

In March 2005 we will be calling a conference of ward committees to discuss ways of strengthening these essential instruments of peoples power.  We believe that the further empowerment of our communities through these ward committees will ensure that communities begin to take charge of their own development in the true spirit of the peoples contract, Vukuzenzele Masakhane and Letsema. We do not subscribe to the old ethos of government by Tri-Cameral Secrecy – of government by secret deals and faceless men.

We believe in the basic values as enshrined in the constitution of responsiveness, accountability, transparency, efficiency, impartiality, fairness and equity.  We believe that it is only by involving the masses that they can truly claim to be the owners and custodians of the democratic reconstruction and development process.

Mr. Speaker, to carry out these tasks we need to change the mindset and the paradigm that prevail within the Municipal institution.  Our inheritance of the administration of the old Pietersburg-Polokwane TLC was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that we inherited a solid technical capability that had the human resource base and the skill to deliver services.  We also inherited a solid resource base that enabled us to build a strong, a smart administration. But it was also a curse in that the mindset and ethos of the apartheid past are still prevalent in some corners of the institution.

Over the last 4 years we have worked hard to change this mindset.  We have transformed the way council operates – in that all parties now have the opportunity to make inputs in the major decisions of Council through their various portfolio committees.

We have also changed the orientation and style of management by bringing in youth enthusiasm with new skills and commitment to our mission of transformation. We have introduced new performance management systems and other systems to fundamentally transform our administration. The measure of our success is that we were awarded the runner-up Vuna Municipal Excellence Awards for two years running. For two years running we have also received unqualified reports from the Auditor General. We have also been honoured by the Housing Institute for our Performance in the Housing Sector and the PMR.

Mr. Speaker these achievements face do not mean that we do not have challenges. At the strategic level we still face some few major challenges. The long term economic development of Polokwane and the surrounding areas is going to depend a lot on whether we can economically and sustainably access major resources like energy, water and the necessary skills base.  In the medium term we will be starting with the construction of second electricity supply line to meet the growing need of our City. The same cannot be said of water resources.  Our continually rising usage of water is not sustainable taking into account that over the next 10 years we anticipate a substantial  increase in the urban population around the City and in Mankweng. At the current levels of consumption our sources of this precious resource cannot be sustained.  We need decisive demand side management measures and the urgent implementation of steps to increase reuse and recycling of water.  In this we have to work with our people to implement water conservation measures and to raise our peoples awareness of the scarcity of this vital resource.

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On he Human Resource Side, it is the duty of government to do everything to ensure a solid skills base to underpin economic growth.  It is therefore our duty to partner with other role players in the skills development field to build this solid base for our economy.

In the transport infrastructure we are cooperating closely with the Provincial Department of Transport to build affordable and reliable road, rail and Air transport systems to serve our growing economy – especially in the light of the coming 2010 Soccer World Cup.

Mr. Speaker in this respect I am pleased to announce that the Provincial Government has agreed to transfer to us an amount of R20 million to start with planning of the upgrading of PETER MOKABA STADIUM for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.  The stadium must be ready for inspection by 2007.

In his state of Province Address the Premier also announced the approval of the results of the feasibility study for the construction of the Polokwane Convention and Exhibition Centre.  I am also pleased to announce that an amount of R30 million will be transferred to LIMDEV which will be our partner in undertaking this enormous project that will put us on the Global stage.

Mr. Speaker before I talk myself to a stand still let me take this opportunity to table before this house our adjustment budget which appears in the Agenda with the following amendments.

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