Good party’s mayoral candidate for Cape Town, Brett Herron, has dismissed the picture painted of the DA-run Mother City as the most well-run municipality in the country, pointing to the vast disparities that exist in the provision of basic services between the rich suburbs and the poorer areas where, in some cases, sewage runs down the streets.
The trajectory of the city had to be changed from a Mother City for some to a Mother City for all, Herron said in an address to the Cape Town Press Club on Tuesday, in which he outlined Good’s policies to create a “fair and sustainable” city. He chided the media for perpetuating the narrative of Cape Town as the most fabulous, best-run city in which to live, noting that this depended on where one lived.
Good, which was established in 2018 by Patricia de Lille — the current Public Works and Infrastructure minister and former Cape Town mayor, will be contesting 45 municipalities in five provinces including six metros — Cape Town, Tshwane, Johannesburg, eThekwini, Buffalo City and Nelson Mandela Bay.
“Sure we have suburbs that rival the most beautiful neighbourhoods in the world but we also have dire slums where people live with raw sewage trickling down the streets... These people battle to equate their circumstances with the so-called world-class city,” Herron said.
He stressed that it could not be business as usual: radical steps were needed to address the social and economic exclusion that characterised the city.
Herron said the DA tried to distinguish itself from the ANC on the grounds that Cape Town under the DA had achieved clean audits, but noted that in fact both parties had done so. Clean audits, he pointed out did not equate to clean streets and clean water in all areas. Cape Town’s infrastructure such as its sewage and water treatment works he said was “on its knees”.
Herron said the party had made gains in the 13 by-elections it contested around the country in the past two years, winning a ward in George and coming a close second to either the DA or the ANC in most of the others.
He said the party was preparing a red line document that detailed the non-negotiables and would guide the party in any coalition discussions that took place after the elections.
Herron, a lawyer by profession who spent nine years as a Cape Town city councillor, eight of them as a member of the mayoral committee, is also Good’s secretary-general. He resigned from the DA and the council in 2018 as he did not believe the party shared his values and did not intend to honour its commitments to create a transformed and inclusive city of Cape Town.
He said the ranks of Good in Cape Town included councillors and former members of the mayoral executive committee as well as people with close links to their communities.
Good, Herron said, wanted to raise the bar for service delivery for all communities and to improve the quality of life for all of the city’s citizens. It based its policies on four pillars: spatial justice, economic justice, social justice and environmental justice, which he believed were in the best interests of both the rich and poor.
Cape Town’s funding model had to change, with water and electricity tariffs being restructured as the fixed levies and surcharges were making basic services unaffordable. Good also wanted to introduce participatory budgeting, which would involve unlocking increasing amounts of the municipal budget for people to choose their spending priorities and how the metro should raise funds through rates and taxes. The city also needed a safe and reliable public transport system and to become energy independent with power generated by renewable energy.
In its election manifesto, the DA has committed itself to doing more to improve basic services in the city.
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