Only a few days ago citizens across our country went to the polls to elect new municipal governments in our sixth local government elections since democracy in 1994.
Municipal government is undoubtedly the most important of our three spheres of administration. The realisation of our right to clean, safe, well-kept and healthy environments depends entirely on a functioning municipal sphere of government.
This year the municipal elections took place the day after World Cities Day on October 31, and the conclusion of Urban October. The theme of this year’s World Cities Day, “Adapting Cities for Climate Resilience”, comes at a time when cities must be more resilient than ever before. They have been epicentres of the Covid-19 pandemic and are on the front lines of the climate crisis.
Despite this, cities are hubs of innovation and human ingenuity. They are the epicentres of humanity’s biggest current challenges, but also the engines from which the solutions emerge.
The Covid-19 pandemic has further demonstrated the role and importance of this sphere. The impact of this pandemic is being felt in our cities, where revenue sources have shrunk, small businesses have been destroyed, and big business have either relocated or halted their investment plans, which exacerbated unemployment, poverty, and inequality.
Therefore, government, led by the national department of co-operative government & traditional affairs, conceptualised and launched the District Development Model (DDM).
The DDM is an operational model for improving co-operative governance to build a capable, ethical and developmental state. It is premised on six pillars to maximise the developmental impact of government programmes and partnerships with private industry and other social partners. The six pillars are:
- People development is about assessing the level of human capacity and development, with the focus on reducing poverty, unemployment and inequality, and uplifting marginalised members of society such as women, the youth, and the disabled.
- Economic positioning identifies key economic drivers and barriers to unlock opportunities and potential in each district and metropolitan area.
- Spatial restructuring and environment development assess land development, land release and land-use management systems, and prioritises township development initiatives and incentives such as the Gauteng Township Economy Bill.
- Infrastructure development evaluates the state of infrastructure to address service backlogs and the growth of districts, and identifies alternative and innovative infrastructure programmes and projects.
- Integrated service provision assesses the state of service delivery across all sectors to improve quality and institute standardised service within the districts.
- Governance development gauges the state of intergovernmental relations and co-ordination, financial governance and management and promotes good governance and ethical leadership.
In Gauteng, the DDM is being implemented across the five municipal districts and metropolitan spaces. We will host the public launches, starting with Johannesburg, this month and followed by Ekurhuleni, Sedibeng, the West Rand and Tshwane.
In our province DDM is working with and complements the execution of our long-term development plans, such as the Growing Gauteng Together (GGT 2030 vision), the Gauteng City Region Economic Rebuilding & Accelerated Initiative and the Climate Change Strategy. These, together with municipal integrated development plans and other sector plans, were critical in informing the development of the long-term plans we have finalised for all five regions, namely, the DDM One Plans.
The province’s GGT 2030 is critical if SA’s most important and economically diverse urban node is to achieve the goals set out in our vision for Gauteng at the end of the decade.
This province contributes 35% of SA’s GDP and is dominant in every sector of the economy except agriculture and mining. It is also Southern Africa’s most significant population centre. It is home to over 15-million people, a quarter of our national population. Given that it is also the smallest province geographically and thus the most dense, forward-looking urban planning is critical to the socio-economic future of our 15-million citizens.
According to the Integrated Urban Development Framework (IUDF), about three-quarters of South Africans will be living in urban areas by 2030. Inward migration into Gauteng from other provinces and the region will be our reality for the for the foreseeable future. We must plan for it.
The IUDF’s overall envisaged outcome is spatial transformation, where urban growth is steered towards a model of compact, connected and co-ordinated cities and towns and the development of inclusive, resilient, and liveable settlements.
This means finally jettisoning our apartheid-inherited, fragmented, unjust and highly unequal spatial planning legacy. For this to be realised Gauteng will be the bellwether and testing ground for the creation of a newer, more just, integrated society.
While the success of DDM is dependent on what happens in Gauteng, it acknowledges that projects will be successful by working with other provinces. For example, the government is building a new economy on both the Gauteng and Free State sides of the Vaal River, such as the Vaal Logistics Hub, which includes two projects: the Logistics Truck Transit Hub and Aerotropolis Mega Project.
Gauteng will remain to all intents and purposes the testing ground for what is likely to work in constructing a new, post-apartheid economic spatial development reality.
Lastly, it should be noted and emphasised that Gauteng (or other provinces) launching DDM projects does not suggest plans and new work are happening from scratch; nor is it a centralisation of planning and implementation at national government level.
The DDM is at its heart an alignment of long-term, high-impact developmental interventions that exist across all spheres of government. It is also a way of ensuring what government does at national or provincial level has a measurable positive impact at the local level.
• Maile is Gauteng MEC for co-operative governance & traditional affairs
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.