Durban — EThekwini city manager Musa Mbhele has vowed to make the city liveable by creating an organisation where there is clean, non-corrupt governance, and financial prudence as to how ratepayers’ money is spent.
He was speaking exclusively to the Daily News on the sidelines of the Resurgence Conference at the ICC on Thursday.
The conference targets black businesses and aims to forge a link between South Africa and the globe.
Mbhele said they would do their part in eliminating informal settlements to improve the quality of life in Durban.
He said the goal was to turn eThekwini into a Smart City that would provide world-class facilities, adding that a lot of investment was going into water technologies following a series of natural disasters in the last couple of years that had left city infrastructure hamstrung.
Mbhele said the City had signed a R29 billion memorandum of agreement with the National Department of Water and Sanitation to transfer water from the upper reaches of the Umkhomazi to ensure water stability within the municipality.
“On water scarcity, there's the Water and Sanitation turnaround strategy. The strategy is supported and implemented to deal with non-revenue water (10-minute mark). This is supported by Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) and the National Treasury.”
He said non-revenue water needed to be decreased from 55% to 33%, bringing it in line with the global norm.
“We are dealing with water leaks and water theft and we are persecuting them. We are also ensuring that we mobilise people to pay for water – even for a flat rate to deal with non-revenue,” he said.
He added that the City would look at recycling used water not for human consumption, but for industry so that it helped save potable water for the community. Mbhele said they were also looking into desalination, where seawater is converted into drinking water, and investing in technology.
He said R7.7bn of the City’s capital budget was spent on damaged infrastructure and dealing with ageing infrastructure. This issue meant the City failed to meet targets to ensure all residents enjoyed a reasonable life; they would continue to work on it.
He praised the city for its recovery after the recent floods, storms and tornadoes; and that despite this, it still ranked first following the Durban Business Confidence Index (BCI) Report.
“Electricity is currently in its draft form, but we will be going on a tender to get different energy supplies and different sources from all over the country,” he said.
Mbhele said the African continent needed to capitalise on the youth as they could contribute immensely with their innovations.
“We set up the youth desk in the mayor’s office – 2300 were employed in a programmed Radical Agrarian Social Economic Transformation and 40% of them are young people. Another 300 were tourism ambassadors, employed to protect the safety/interest of tourists.”
The Public Employment Programme had 5 300 people – 4 300 of them are young people, he said.
He added that the Durban Film Festival and Durban Fashion Fair were two events where they had identified young people.
His successes:
- The City registered most jobs created because all projects we do yield positive job creations (Stats SA)
- High business confidence index
- The city is clean. The amount of time and effort put into ensuring that the city is clean; they are beginning to show good results; and eliminating illegal dumping. Well-maintained. Grass/ verges are cut.
- Lighting. The city is well-lit and the lights are functional.
- Financial management is sound. We still have the highest rating internationally even though it dropped a bit due to talks on Section 139. The budget is the most liquid institution that can give cheaper loan access – this is due to the strongest Treasury offices.
Challenges:
- Strikes (especially unplanned) did ruin the city’s image. He said that they are working on the relations between unions and employees.
- Media relationship. He emphasised that there seems to be a lop-sided representation.
- “Bad news sells fast.”
- Changing political landscape. We have to contend with a lot of “votes of no-confidence”. It rattles the system and causes the institution to be imbalanced.
- Non-payment of services is a challenge because the middle class is beginning to feel the pinch and we need to make sure they’re not overburdened.
- By-laws being disrespected.
“We have a programme targeting the township economy and are making sure there are financial incentives to benefit the locals,” he said.
He concluded that even when malls are built, there must still be space for informal trade.
Speaking about the conference, Mbhele said it was an investment conference targeting underprivileged people not only from South Africa but the entire diaspora as well. He said this came about after the realisation that most Africans globally were being left out.
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