State of the town address
STATE OF THE TOWN ADDRESS BY THE EXECUTIVE MAYOR OF BITOU LOCAL MUNICIPALITY, ALDERMAN LULAMA MVIMBI, ON APRIL 15, 2011 AT PIESANG COMMUNITY HALL
Mr Speaker, Councillor Lawrence Luiters
Deputy Mayor, Councillor Monica Seyisi
Fellow Councillors of Bitou Local Council
Visiting Mayors & Councillors
Municipal Manager, Mr Lonwaba Ngoqo
Heads of Department
Ward Committee Members
Leaders of Political Parties in our town
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
As the council of the municipality, we are glad to be presenting our last progress report of our term of office to the community of Bitou. We present this report this month, having regard to important events that took place in this history of our country and our town.
On March 1, 2006, the people of Bitou went to the polls with the rest of the country to elect their local government representatives. The people of Bitou emphatically voted the ANC back as the government in this town. We accepted the confidence with humbleness, knowing quite well that the people of Bitou wanted us to intensify changes we had begun earlier so that they could justly feel that they are proud citizens of this country and town.
Five years later, we stand here today to thank the community of Bitou for the trust they conferred on us when they voted us into office, and the support they gave us during our term. We also stand here today to give you the final report back for the term of office.
This is our last State of the Town Address. This comes just a month before the end of term of our term of office. State of the town speeches are usually about reflecting on the past year's significant accomplishments. There will be no difference in this year’s speech. We are going to present to you what poet calls "the ever whirling wheels of change".
We are gathered here today in the month of April, which is important to us as we remember some of the most historic moments that characterize Africa and South Africa. It was on April 27, 1972, when one of Africa’s leading fathers, Kwame Nkrumah died from skin cancer while in exile.
Almost seven years later on April 6 1979, the apartheid regime murdered Solomon “Kalushi” Mahlangu. It is worth noting that Solomon Mahlangu was murdered exactly three-hundred and twenty-seven years after Jan van Riebeeck landed at the Cape of Good Hope, heralding the beginning of the dark era of colonial subjugation and plunder in South and Southern Africa. We know that with the passage of time the peoples of this region were progressively reduced to a status of colonial vassals serving the interests of the imperialist oppressors and their hangers-on.
Solomon Mahlangu was one of the many who stood up in a fight to end oppression brought by the arrival of Jan Van Riebeeck on April 6 1652.
It was on April 10, 1993 that negotiations for a peaceful transition nearly came to a total halt. That was the day Chris Hani was assassinated. A few days after Chris Hani’s death on April 24, 1993 we lost one of Africa’s most distinguished leaders in Oliver Reginald Tambo. Tambo honourably fought a good freedom fight but like the Biblical Moses, death robbed him the opportunity to see the new land.
We still vividly remember the long queues of April 27, 1994 when our struggle for liberation reached its pinnacle. It was in that year that for the first time Black people were granted their basic human right to vote for the government of their choice.
Mr Speaker
At the time of attaining democracy, we had in the words of former President Thabo Mbeki “known that it would take considerable time before we could say we have eradicated the legacy of the past. We have expected that the circumstances handed down to us by our history would indeed condemn us to a ‘petty pace’ of progress towards the achievement of the goal of a better life for all”.
As government at national and local level, we knew as we still know today that we are faced with enormous work before we could reach a stage where majority of our people can achieve poverty-free lives. And we committed ourselves to undoing the damage done by colonialism and apartheid for over 300 years. We committed ourselves to work hard to improve the living standards of people.
At the occasion of the first state of the town address, we committed to always tell you nothing but the truth. We committed ourselves to telling the truth knowing well that some of you would read stories about the management of our municipality from newspapers. Some stories would be half-true while other would be total fabrications.
Our resolve to tell nothing but the truth was inspired by our love and respect for the people of Bitou. Our love to tell the truth is influenced by our faith in The Almighty, and our hope for our land. Our decision to tell the truth was emboldened by biblical proverb found in the Book of Proverbs where it says -
“Umlomo wenyaniso uzimasekile kwaphela;
Ke lona ulwimi oluxokayo lolwephanyazo”
In Afrikaans dit se –
“’n betroubare lip bestaan vir altyd,
Maar ‘n valse tong vir ‘n oomblik”
The English version is -
“The lip of truth shall be established for ever:
but a lying tongue is but for a moment.”
Even today, we will tell you nothing but the truth.
History has it that before 1990s Plettenberg Bay was one of the towns in which there was laws that specifically prohibited the establishment of black townships. This meant that most of our African people had either to live in shacks or find residence in surrounding towns. For those who moved to other areas, life was still not better as they also remained in shacks, the only difference was that there was hope that the government of the day might build houses for them. There were numerous attempts by the apartheid government to uproot Africans from Plettenberg Bay, but the determination of our people, led by the ANC, to realise the goal set in the Freedom Charter where it says “All people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security;” made it impossible for government of the day to succeed.
It is therefore not surprising that we are still trying to make Pinetree/Qolweni/Bossiesgif a habitable place for our community. During our term of office, we started by supplying electricity to every household in the area. We then moved to building of roads and installation of other services like water and sanitation infrastructure. And then moved on to build houses. To date 165 houses have been completed and 1 135 are still be completed in that area. A few years ago, the place infront of the Community Hall in Kwanokuthula was just a barren land. Today, stand beautifully built houses that many visitors mistaken to private sector funded housing projects. These are the houses built by this municipality. This shows that we took lessons of the past in order to make the present quality of housing better.
During our term of office, we completed 861 houses for Kwanokuthula, Kranshoek, Pinetree/Bossiesgif/Qolweni, and Kurland. A total of 1 779 housing units is under way. The upgrading of the hostel in New Horizon to family units has been completed.
Given this tremendous effort, we are certain that soon a day will arrive when would have secured a roof over the head of every child, woman and the elder person in this town, in this country.
We tarred, and/or paved, and/or built pedestrian walkways in many streets including Redford, Saringa, Melkhout, Wizard, Besana, Robberg, Mirriam Rooi, Luxolo, Nqolo, Sishuba, Mbeki, Kiewiet, Long, Miller, Dunn, Botha, Pine, Heather, Mantyi, Kammase, Essenhout, Gift, Geelhout, Xhiphula, Gqamlana, Skosana Loredo, Kok, Redford, Mandela, Masakhane, Sajini and Masibambane streets. The work undertaken in these areas was to ensure that our streets are user friendly to both vehicles and pedestrians.
We were determined to improve the state of our infrastructure in order for us to compete with other towns of our size and complexion. That is why we invested over R20m to reconstruction the Main Street in the Central Business District.
We completed the pedestrian bridge over the N2 for the Bossiesgif/Qolweni and New Horizons. And established employment and business opportunity centre, or the RED Door, within the bridge precinct.
The upgrading of Kwanokuthula taxi rank was successfully completed. This included improved taxi movement layout, roof cover, ablution facilities and informal trading stalls. The new facility gives dignity to both commuters, taxi operators in the area, and is a vast improvement on our local transport industry.
The construction of two ARV treatment rooms at the Kwanokuthula Clinic was completed. We also completed major extensions at the Kranshoek Clinic. The Kwanokuthula Community Health Centre, which was approved by the previous provincial government, has been completed and soon will start taking patients and be officially opened.
The new library for the Kranshoek Community was completed and opened for public.
We completed a pilot to profile one of our wards to clearly define poverty matrix of our municipality. The project has now been extended to include all the wards. This profiling will help us to determine the kind of assistance required by each family in our quest to eradicate poverty.
Our poverty eradication programmes have been taken to ward-based planning. In this regard, various projects have been earmarked for specific ward. In this way, we have given space to each of our ward to drive development in their wards. That confirms that we still believe in “the people shall govern”.
The Constitution enjoins us participate in education matters. Our response to this Constitutional obligation has been to get involved in various programmes intended to improve the education standard of our children.
And in this regard, we have given financial and other material assistance to the existing Early Childhood Development Centres. Besides our Constitutional obligation, we believe that our involvement in ECD will help us deal with national and international studies and surveys that paint a gloomy picture of our children’s ability to read and write.
The establishment and launch of South Cape College’s campus in Bitou has been greatly welcomed by our community. The college is not for student from Kwanokuthula only but for the whole of Bitou municipal area.
The municipality made land and infrastructure available for the establishment of the college. As a sign of long-term commitment to the town, the college is constructed more buildings on the land.
With national government plans to upgrade the FETs to the status of fully fledged colleges of higher learning to ease congestion at universities, we can be proud of the decision we took in the first place because we are now more than likely to have an institute of higher learning in our town.
We entered into an agreement with Bitou 10 Foundation to fund the organisation for several years at R120 000 per annum.
We have also initiated a learner programme with local high schools, which is aimed at acknowledging top achievers to motivate others to increase the level of academic performance within local public high schools. It is also to nurture tomorrow’s leaders and to bring together cultural diversity.
In conjunction with the Tourism, Hospitality and Sport Education and Training Authority (Theta) SETA we employed fifty interns in one intake. This is the highest number to date by any municipality of our size. We subsequently took additional twenty young people into the programme. The main purpose of the programme is to give our people the necessary experience so that they can become competitive in the labour market. There is no obligation on the municipality to employ any of the interns at the end of the programme. However, majority of them have ended up being employed in our municipal departments.
We spent R1.4m in education bursaries for the children of Bitou who are at either universities or FET colleges. Some of these children are currently doing in-service training at the municipality.
In order to avoid discussing youth as problems of the society, we focused on creating opportunities for the youth and developing policies of a developmental local government that can help youth attain success. Most young people are struggling to do the best they can, often against conditions that work against them: they are the new job-seekers in a society with high unemployment; they are neither taken care of like children nor completely autonomous like adults; they are seeking a self–identity while being barraged with peer pressure and media images that are not conducive to a healthy lifestyle; and too often they are feared and distrusted by older people.
But we know that young people can offer this community the hope for economic well-being, a new society that is inclusive and tolerant, and for new visionary leadership. We went out to find ways to help them use their creative energy deliberately and positively in the development process. We have made them see and feel that they matter, and are able to take action to help build this town.
Through intensive programmes, we built corners stones that would allow young people to become the vanguard of new society build on morality. Our programmes seek to ensure that our young people well educated, socially integrated, and healthy, and they attain a strong and positive sense of self-worth in order to become good future parents and good citizens.
We have established a good relationship with our elderly persons. On annual basis, we organise a get together with our grandparents for two purposes. Firstly, to thank them for being there for us, especially during the time of apartheid when they carry us on their backs while working in the fields or doing house chores after spending hours working at other people’s homes. But we also use that opportunity to get lessons on ubuntu from them. This interaction has been highly beneficial to us as local government. When we talk to elderly people we know that we will be told nothing but the truth, which is meant to build us to be better persons.
Mr Speaker
We brought some cultures which hope will be carried forward by future leaders of this municipality. One of these cultures is consistent meeting with the people. This is more about entrenching participatory democracy, through Council Walkabouts. This is a programme where the Mayor, Ward Councillors and all Senior Managers go out to meet with people in their homes, to get first-hand experience of how people receive and perceive our service delivery standards.
These walkabouts brought a totally new picture to policy makers, and implementers. We are thankful to those members of the public who were honest with us, who told us about their dissatisfaction about the standard in some of our service and those who reported back that we have improved on previous standards.
In order to improve communication on the standard of service delivery, we are ably assisted by Community Development Workers. The CDWs were introduced by national government in 2003. We have since then been positive about their impact on service delivery in our town. And unlike other municipalities that keep shifting the CDWs to the door of the provincial administration, we embraced them and each of our Wards now has at least two CDWs, which are paid by the municipality.
Our Community Development Workers ensure that government was "based on the will of the people" and they are mainly young people who “live with the people, walk with them and talk their language."
One of the things that most of our detractors were saying every day was that the municipality was corrupt and bankrupt. All government institutions, including municipalities, are annually audited by the Auditor General in order to give an unbiased reflection of how that institution is handling public funds.
At the beginning of our term, we resolved that we would towards clean audit on our fourth year in office. We achieved the unqualified audit on our second year. And that has become our second culture. For three years on the trot, we have achieved a clean audit. We are aware that despite this big achievement, some councillors and others in provincial government insist that the outcome of the auditor general’s auditing of our books is wrong. But they want us to believe that the same outcomes arrived where they are in power are correct. That is a show of dishonesty on their part.
Mr Speaker
As government, we are the first to agree that despite these achievements, and in the words of President Jacob Zuma –
“While many South Africans celebrate the delivery of houses, electricity [and] water, there are yet many others who are still waiting. The legacy of decades of apartheid underdevelopment and colonial oppression cannot be undone in only 17 years.
But we are forging ahead, determined to achieve our mission of building a better life for all.
And we are doing so with the help of our people. We appreciate the feedback they continue to give us.”
Some of the problems we face as residents of this town are problems we face as a nation. National government is working hard to address all those things. We as the municipality are working hard to make our contribution towards a better community.
In tandem with national government, we decided in 2009 to focus on five priorities. These are Education, Health, Rural Development & Agrarian Reform, taking forward the Fight against Crime and Creating Decent Work.
Our work as the municipality has been aligned with these key delivery priorities. This includes an initiative to buy a farm for communal use by local small-scale farmers.
However, we seen a significant decline in employment opportunities as a direct result of the world economic crises. The people’s government could not leave things as they are. That was the reason for President Zuma to remark at his State of the Nation Address in February 2011 that –
“However, we are concerned that unemployment and poverty persist despite the economic growth experienced in the past 10 years.
To address these concerns, we have declared 2011 a year of job creation through meaningful economic transformation and inclusive growth.
We have introduced a New Growth Path that will guide our work in achieving these goals, working within the premise that the creation of decent work is at the centre of our economic policies.
We urge every sector and every business entity, regardless of size, to focus on job creation. Every contribution counts in this national effort.”
Likewise, as Bitou, we will focus on job creation. Our immediate focus will be to create conditions conducive to a climate of private sector investment in our town for creation of these desperately needed jobs. As municipality, we will also ensure that all vacant posts are filled. Some of the measures will include –
Building and Relocation of Central library to New Horizon;
Upgrading of Saringa Street in New Horizon;
Building of Justice precinct;
Relocation of main municipal offices;
Upgrading of Sishuba Street to be a boulevard;
Building of a central sports centre in Kwanokuthula;
Building of new houses in New Horizon;
Building of new houses in Green Valley
Reconstruction of Long Street in Kranshoek;
Upgrading of the Dam area in Kranshoek;
Additional provision of housing in Kwanokuthula;
Additional provision of housing in Kurland;
Since the beginning of our term, we endeavoured to bring hope to our people. Our decisions and deeds we geared to make sure that we look beyond our term of office.
But our entrance was not without problems. We received a baptism of fire. Our people were incited to be violent and break the laws of the municipality and the country. Smoked billowed in Kwanokuthula and blood spilled on the streets. But soldiered on, using the truth as our weapon. Now that we come to the end of our terms, we can confidently borrow from Ben Okri in his book titled “A Way of Being Free” when he says –
“A famous writer, feeling his life coming to an end, writes these words: “my soul looks back and wonders how I got over”.
We can ask the same question – “Our soul look back and wonder how we got over?”
We know that our people are looking forward to the future. They want us to build houses for them. They want their children to be educated. They need proper health care system. They want jobs and jobs and jobs. They want to live in safety. They want to drink clean water. They want to live in clean surroundings.
In situation like this, Ben Okri goes further to say -
“A young woman, standing on a shore, looks out into an immense azure sea rimmed with silver line of the horizon. She looks out into the obscure heart of destiny, and is overwhelmed by a feeling both dark and oddly joyful. She may be thinking something like this: ‘My soul looks forward and wonders - just how am I going to get across’. “
The people of Bitou’s “soul look forward and wonder, just how they are going to get across” the sea of poverty, the mountain of joblessness, the river of crime.
We still offer truth, excellent service delivery and hope to our people and with the help of everyone, we shall get across. Some years later, our soul will look back and we will shed tears of joy for we will be saying “Sinqobile”.
We have come to the end of the term the current municipal council, and it is fitting to thank The Speaker – for steering the ship. There were times when it was becoming more and more difficult to control some of us during council meetings, but through sheer dedication, he managed sail through those rough waters;
The Deputy Mayor – most of the time, I would ask her at the eleventh hour to hold fort, and she never disappointed;
The Chief Whip - he was the most vilified of us all, but he never ceased to give guidance and ensured that as the ruling party we kept to our mandate to better the lives of our people;
All ANC Councillors - you went and ensured that the people come first. It was a pleasure to work with all of you;
Opposition Councillors – we hope that you learned good lessons, being opposition should not amount to being disruptive. You would have made meaning contribution if you offered firm but constructive criticism;
The Municipal Manager, Heads of Department and all other officials for the support and hard work. We know that there were times that we put much pressure on you and you mostly showed a high degree of professionalism;
To my family – thank you to my beautiful wife for allowing me space and offering me support to serve the people of Bitou. I know that there were times that my children complained that I was mostly on municipal work;
To Ward Committees – Thank you for your participation that ensured that our people are actively involved in the governance of our town;
Thank you to the Audit Committee, especially to its chairperson, Mr Brian Molefe, for keeping us on our toes, and ensured that we administer public funds with honesty and necessary vigilance.
We thank our service providers, majority of which we developed mutual respect and commitment towards better service delivery to our community.
Above all, we thank the community of Bitou for trusting us with the future of this beautiful town. As we close this chapter and move to the next one, we will always be indebted to your faith in us and we promise never to disappoint your hopes and dreams.
Thank you
