After losing three big metros in 2021’s local government elections, Gauteng premier David Makhura has pledged to put party politics aside and work with all the mayors of the province’s 11 municipalities to tackle service delivery backlogs and invest in infrastructure development.
“Service delivery, as we speak, especially infrastructure, has collapsed in many parts of Gauteng. It’s the truth,” Makhura said, during his state of the province address at the Brixton multipurpose centre in Johannesburg on Monday.
Gauteng’s metros of Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg and Tshwane fall under DA-led coalitions after the local government elections of November 2021. But they have had to operate in a province that is run by Makhura’s ANC, resulting in political and ideological clashes.
This could be a thing of the past with Makhura saying his provincial administration will collaborate with all local authorities. “Every Thursday and Friday I will be in a municipality ... we will be out there working with the mayors.”
His decision to work with all the local council mayors comes a few weeks after the ANC caucus in the City of Johannesburg called on Gauteng co-operative governance & traditional affairs MEC Lebogang Maile to intervene in the affairs of the council. Several attempts to elect portfolio committee chairs were collapsed by ANC, EFF and minority party councillors who were unhappy with the voting procedure.
In 2021, the Constitutional Court ruled that a similar intervention by Maile to place the Tshwane council under administration was unlawful. This happened in March 2020 after the council failed to convene and retain the necessary quorum from September 2019 due to walkouts by ANC and EFF councillors.
On Monday, Makhura said the municipal mayors “have our full support. We won’t work along the lines of political parties … the people of Gauteng want the elected government to work for them, not for parties,” he said, adding that the provincial government spends R2bn a year in different municipalities on rates and taxes.
Makhura said the province’s efforts are aimed at bettering the lives of Gauteng’s 15-million residents, stressing that corruption and the “living standards of our people are a big problem”.
A survey released in September 2021 by the Gauteng City Region Observatory, a research project of the provincial government, the universities of Wits and Johannesburg and the SA Local Government Association, showed a big drop in the quality of life of residents over the past two years.
In his address, Makhura said “all hands are on deck” to improve service delivery and put proper infrastructure in place to drive much-needed economic growth.
Gauteng is SA’s economic powerhouse and contributes about 35% to GDP. In 2020, the province was named the seventh-largest economy in Africa. Gauteng, however, is dogged by an unemployment rate of 37%, due partly to the coronavirus pandemic, which battered the economy, resulting in a 6.4% GDP decline in 2020 and a loss of 1.4-million jobs.
“Unemployment has become a crisis, we have to rebuild and protect our infrastructure. The dysfunctional state of our infrastructure, and the inability to deliver services to our communities, constitutes an emergency,” Makhura said.
“As we make the economy and jobs centre stage, and our No 1 priority in the next two years, we will work with national government and municipalities to accelerate service delivery and improve infrastructure.”
Makhura wants communities to have access to health care, energy and electricity, roads, visible policing and housing, among other things. Since 2019 his administration has created more than 50,000 housing opportunities in the province and it now wants to hand over about 44,000 title deeds in the next two years.
On the provincial economy, Makhura said his administration has set up a “provincial war room” to drive economic recovery, unlock growth in every sector, create jobs and support the growth of small, medium and macro enterprises.
The provincial government is working with the agribusiness sector to ensure adequate food security in Gauteng and position the sector for employment opportunities. There are cannabis growers who are already processing medicinal cannabis in the province, despite challenges pertaining to licensing, access to land and financing, he said.
The provincial government has spent more than R5bn on women-owned enterprises, R470m on businesses run by people with disabilities, and about R5.3bn on those owned by young people.
Makhura said R100m has been made available to assist township businesses affected by the unrest in July 2021, when businesses and warehouses were looted and set alight, after former president Jacob Zuma’s incarceration. The mayhem in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal cost the economy R50bn.
The premier said the provincial government is working with the Industrial Development Corporation to disburse the money to affected businesses.
The province’s special economic zones, such as the Tshwane Automotive and Vaal River zones, are positioned as growth centres that could help create jobs while unlocking billions of investment in the provincial economy, Makhura said.
Youth empowerment initiatives such as Tshepo 1Million, and the Extended Public Works Programme, have helped to create thousands of jobs. Between 2014 and 2019 the provincial government invested R53bn in infrastructure, helping to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, said Makhura.
The provincial government has set up an “infrastructure war room” to help deal with every aspect of infrastructure development in Gauteng. “Infrastructure development enhances service delivery and creates investment.
“We will rebuild our province brick by brick,” said Makhura, stressing that his administration is committed to uprooting corruption in all its manifestations. This includes strict consequence management and vetting of senior managers, also supply chain management officials who deal with government tenders.
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