.The Speaker of Council, Cllr Raymond Dlamini
The Whip of Council, Alderman Khetha Shandu
Members of the Mayoral Committee
Chair of Chairs and Chairpersons of Oversight Committees
Leaders of All Political Parties in Council
Honourable Councillors
The City Manager, Dr Imogen Mashazi
The Senior Management of the City
Leaders of Business, Labour, and Civil Society
Fellow residents of Ekurhuleni
Distinguished Guests
Members of the Media
Ladies and Gentlemen
Good morning, Goeie More, Sanibonani, Dumelang!
It is a great honour to deliver my maiden State of the City Address today.
It is an honour bestowed when a change was demanded through the ballot box and votes in this Chamber by the Citizens of Ekurhuleni.
It is an honour that I share with the Multi-Party Coalition Government of the City of Ekurhuleni. This unique moment in history is one we don’t take for granted.
Our coalition is as diverse as the communities we serve. It comprises of representation from the Democratic Alliance, Action SA, the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Congress of the People, the African Christian Democratic Party, the Freedom Front Plus and the Patriotic Alliance.
It gives us a distinct advantage in understanding the real challenges facing communities across the city. As a result, we are well placed to resolve the service delivery and financial quagmire we encountered when we acceded to office barely four months ago.
That understanding will be reflected in the programmes and priorities we layout today.
That understanding is also why I have chosen the theme for the first State of the City Address of this administration: “Back to Basics for Service Delivery and Inclusive Growth.”
Our priorities under this theme can be summarised in nine points, the wording and spirit of which draw heavily on our Coalition Administration:
Giving residents back their power by helping to reduce their vulnerability to Eskom load shedding; enhance access to reliable, affordable, and sustainable electricity.
Ensuring that every community has access to reliable, clean, running water, that is safe to drink and to prepare food; that we modernise water management and prevent untreated wastewater from contaminating the environment.
Investing in safe, reliable, affordable public transport; well-maintained roads; and infrastructure renewal with measures to safeguard infrastructure from vandalism and theft.
Ensuring there is a hygienic environment to live and play, delivered through the effective waste collection and waste disposal, working landfill sites, the implementation of recycling programmes through reclaiming of untidy public parks and cemeteries.
Promoting housing options, ensuring more people own their homes by receiving their valid title deeds.
Being tough on crime and tougher on the causes of crime by investing in localised law enforcement
Minimising the risks which lead to poor health, responding effectively to health emergencies, and promoting the resilience of communities through effective disaster risk management.
Regaining the financial stability of the city by ensuring good governance
Using Back to Basics service delivery as a foundation for bringing in investment and jobs to the local economy by making it easier to do business within the municipality
Mr Speaker,
The first few months of our time in the office were marked with many highlights and some moments that begged deeper reflection.
It was a distinct pleasure for me to host our top matrics of 2021 last week in an Academic Appreciation Webinar.
It was my pleasure to assist unfunded top performers from the Mayoral Discretionary Fund to help them achieve a start on their tertiary education journeys, paving their way to a successful future
However, all our learners deserve recognition for their perseverance during a year in which COVID-19 often disrupted learning, as do our Health Department’s frontline staff for their excellent efforts in helping us achieve a 64.8% vaccination rate by 10 March of this year.
During April, which by resolution of the Council is Hero’s Month in Ekurhuleni, we mark the contribution of Chris Hani.
In this regard, it was an honour for me to recently host Mrs Limpho Hani at the Mayoral Office to discuss the appropriate marking of her husband’s memory as a beacon of dignity, integrity, and commitment to the betterment of South Africa in the eyes of many.
We should follow through further on this tradition and consider honouring some more of the many great South Africans from across the political sphere, business, culture, and civic society that come from our city when the opportunity arises to do so.
At the very least, we should follow through on motions that have passed in Council to honour great citizens from our city, but have yet to be executed, such as one that passed during the first administration of the City of Ekurhuleni relating to anti-apartheid activist and daughter of Germiston, Helen Suzman.
Indeed, South Africa will have to draw on the best examples of the strength and foresight to extricate ourselves from the record unemployment and low growth it has been mired in.
In Ekurhuleni, we will also be impacted by a heightened inflation outlook of around 5.8% for the remainder of this year, which was brought on by supply chain difficulties already deteriorated by COVID-19 and now exacerbated by the impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
While we hope for the speedy re-emergence of peace in that region, we now not also need to galvanise our efforts to ensure the stable recovery of our city from the past two years of turmoil, but also bolster our resilience for the future.
It is not enough for us to think global while acting locally. Despite being a minority government, our Multi-Party Coalition must achieve in the near term while also planning for the long-term.
So it is indeed with optimism, but realistic optimism that we announce the following key service delivery objectives for this administration to make real progress in the lives of our citizens:
Mr Speaker,
With this Multi-Party Coalition in charge, the City of Ekurhuleni will by the end of this political term in 2026, for some time have experienced a reliable as well as expanded electricity supply.
How will we achieve this?
First, by investing in the replacement and expansion of backbone infrastructure at a rate of at least 10km of cables per year, for the next four years.
It will start with a 40% increase in capital expenditure allocation in the next financial year, with increases at an average of 12% over the outer years. Circuits and equipment will also be refurbished.
The city will be decreasing its dependence on Eskom through the recent appointment of 47 Private Power Producers, which will now be built and sell electricity to the city from 2024 onwards.
Under MMC Senzi Sibeko, the Energy Department is further investigating installing Battery Energy Storage Systems in the longer term: it will allow us to mitigate load-shedding on the one hand, but on the other, also provide the option to store energy when supply is at cheap low demand and draw on reserves during expensive peak periods.
Still, whether it is in Kempton Park or KwaThema, Duduza or Delville, Brackendowns or Bedfordview, there are plenty of recent experiences with food being spoilt, residents feeling vulnerable, or transactions that could not happen due to unscheduled power outages.
Cable theft, theft of other assets and illegal connections cause a significant number of electricity outages.
With current security contracts coming to an end in June 2022, it provides an opportunity to introduce incentives for arrests and successful prosecution of culprits and set standards with respect to patrols and guard placement.
We will also make better use of early warning technology, with installation of alarms and protective structures with smart locking capabilities.
We welcome the willingness of the private sector to partner with the City of Ekurhuleni to keep the lights on in the interests of retaining jobs and investment in our city:
despite having been at the receiving end of substandard service delivery and infrastructure degradation for years;
despite often having their motivations questioned and offers refused when they propose practical and financial assistance to the city.
I’d like to recognise especially Alberton North Business Forum, who installed alarms at three different substations to mitigate asset pilfering, and members of the 44kVA WhatsApp group in Wadeville, for their offers of assistance to the City.
Representatives of both groups were received at the OR Tambo Precinct recently.
To these patient investors, the ratepayers and residents across Ekurhuleni, we ask: keep faith with us, the ship is turning, and in the interim, keep us to account with regards to improved communications on outages and network information.
As councillors will be aware, Mr Speaker,
The majority of our all-too-frequent water outages are, however, caused by drops in pressure in supply from Rand Water due to Eskom outages.
To counter this, we will, by June 2023, have constructed nine additional water towers and reservoirs, in addition to the nine projects being finalised by the end of the current financial year.
The well-being of our ratepayers and residents critically depends on the updating of infrastructure to stop contamination and waste.
By the end of this political term, we are therefore targeting that:
• none of our drinking water will flow through asbestos cement pipes anymore;
• major over capacitated outfall sewer lines would also have been replaced in the southern and northern regions of Ekurhuleni; and, furthermore,
• we aim for water losses to be reduced by a quarter.
More immediate steps over the next financial year will include the replacement of 8000 water meters and the replacement and upgrading of sewer pipes across the city.
We will also be tightening consequence management for the illegal water connection and unauthorised consumption and damage to services, in terms of which inspection fees and stiff fines will be levied.
According to a World Wildlife Fund report on Scenarios for the Future of Water in South Africa, our country is approaching physical water scarcity in 2025 and are expected to experience a water deficit of 17 percent by 2030 – a situation in which climate change could worsen.
The council should therefore support ERWAT to improve the re-use and management of resources through water reclamation, green smart plants, renewable energy initiatives, sludge beneficiation, in-line turbines, just to name a few.
However, this is an entity from which we expect much greater ingenuity and motivation to fund a more significant portion of their maintenance backlogs and obsolete equipment replacement off their balance sheet, rather than merely running to Council with a cupped hand.
This was also explained in clear terms to the new board, under new board chairperson Dr Natalie Scheepers, who we recently introduced and welcomed at the Mayoral Strategic Session earlier in March of this year.
Investment in further treatment capacity expansion to support development in the city alone requires an estimated R2.5bn over the next five years, for which we are considering the utilisation of the Build-Operate-Transfer mechanism.
Mr Speaker,
Residents will be aware that the rainfall this season has been extraordinarily high – at more than 900mm since October of last year, it already exceeds our average annual downpour by more than a quarter.
Bullfrog Pan, a natural stormwater pan with no outlet, exceeded its 50-year flood line earlier in March.
Employees, travellers, and residents in Midstream, Olifantsfontein, Tembisa, and Germiston have all bore the brunt of this year’s weather pattern.
With climate change showing no signs of abating, it is essential that our Roads and Stormwater Department improve on their stormwater maintenance performance.
The Department has in previous years only achieved about 70% of their stormwater maintenance targets, which must change now.
During the first 100 days of our Multi-Party Coalition administration alone, 2100 stormwater drains, or 30% of the IDP target for the current financial year were maintained, and we expect to exceed the performance of prior financial years by the end of June.
Instead of in the City of Ekurhuleni, people say we find ourselves in Pothole City.
Accordingly, another immediate focus area of our administration, 29000m2 of road was patched during our first 100 days. A lot more remains to be done.
While public-private partnerships are being pursued by myself and MMC Kalipa, the backlogs faced even by such partnerships in other cities in the country demonstrate the scale of the problem.
Our Multi-Party Coalition has therefore directed that our Department of Finance increase the maintenance and repair allocation to the Roads and Stormwater Department.
This will be done by reallocating savings from the salary bill considering the latest National Treasury determinations.
We encourage citizens to continue to report potholes via the My CoE app and other service delivery complaint routes.
80km of road will be rehabilitated, and the Department will start to chip away at the 1200km in gravel roads upgrade in the next financial year.
In terms of road construction, the Roads and Stormwater Department fares well.
It will, amongst others aim for the completion of the Daveyton/N12 interchange by the end of the next financial year.
The construction of a 13km dual carriageway to replace the current Barry Marais Road that runs from Vosloorus to the N17 at Carnival City is targeted for completion before the 2026 end of the political term.
Ekurhuleni needs to be a city on the move, Mr Speaker,
In the coming financial year, the Multi-Party Coalition government will support Phase 1A of the Harambee Bus Rapid Transport Network, running from Thembisa via Kempton Park to OR Tambo International Airport, to be fully operational
We will also support extension of the network in Thembisa and the service from Kempton Park/Rhodesfield to Boksburg (Phase 1B).
Under MMC Ngobese, the condition of various public transport facilities is being assessed and the Germiston Bus Depot, the Germiston Intermodal Facility and the Somhlolo Public Transport Facility will all be refurbished in the coming financial year.
Mr Speaker,
Weather conditions associated with climate change causes floods and pummel infrastructure. We, therefore, need to see that we reduce our contribution to the causes of extreme climate events.
The Global Covenant of Mayors recently awarded the City of Ekurhuleni three badges for Climate & Energy for its achievements towards low-emission, climate-resilient and sustainable energy future, yet much more remains to be done.
We have also resolved to align our environment and waste goals for our term in office, aligning ourselves with the C40 Network protocols on climate change.
Under MMC Du Plessis, our Environment and Waste Department has been hard at work to deal with rehabilitating infested waterbodies, targeting the protection of wetlands, reopening two inoperative landfill sites, and dealing with illegal dumping around the city
Their maintenance activities have increased significantly in pace – particularly grass cutting at parks and cemeteries after emergency funds had to be allocated due to insufficient fund allocation by the prior administration.
Clean-ups have commenced in the Central Business Districts – once the jewels of our city – to entice businesses back.
Over the next financial year, these activities will continue, in addition to the following:
A programme to roll out 240-litre wheelie bins to backyard tenants, starting in Tembisa, has commenced to mitigate illegal dumping.
All five of our landfill sites will be operable with gas wells operating at four of them.
We will also introduce waste separation at source, at all municipal buildings and will ask the support of the Council to pursue the establishment of an Alternative Waste Treatment Facility in the North of the City.
By the end of the political term in 2026, we target to have established a fully completed plastics recycling facility in conjunction with OXFAM SA and other investors.
For our housing beneficiaries Mr Speaker,
The city at present distributes around 2000 title deeds per annum. Under MMC Peterson, the backlogs in outstanding title deeds at the provincial structures will be vigorously pursued. We will increase the number of title deeds we issue from 2000 to 3000 for the next financial year.
The city’s social housing stock will continue to be refurbished on an ongoing basis and Breaking New Ground housing units will be delivered subject to further roll-over approval and gazetting by the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements (GDHS).
Provision of serviced sites will continue, as will the provision of essential services to 119 informal settlements spread throughout the city, however we aspire to achieve more.
877 units will be completed across various social housing complexes in the next financial year.
As councillors will be aware, there are 11 Mega Housing projects currently underway across the corridors of the City of Ekurhuleni. The projects have envisaged completion dates over the next 3 to 5 years from now, with a total expected yield of just under 100 000 units.
Human settlements need to be humane settlements: The Multi-Party Coalition government at the January Mayoral Strategic Session pronounced itself on maintaining fair, non-market related rates for social housing.
Human settlements need to be sustainable settlements: Their collection rates need to improve significantly to ensure a return to financial stability for the Ekurhuleni Housing Company.
The review of the operating model on historical, social housing complexes will be a part of this process, as will tenant verification. We want to be sure that social housing is not abused, that those who reside there are the intended beneficiaries according to policy and that there is no tampering with the process.
Human settlements also need to be safe settlements and our city must be a safe city for all who reside and do business in it.
A recent highlight of our tenure as the Multi-Party Coalition government was to attend the 20th Anniversary of the City of Ekurhuleni’s Metropolitan Police Department.
This was a major milestone for our men and women in uniform, yet, as a mark of their selflessness, they celebrated it by welcoming 20 children from a Reach For a Dream Foundation for a once-in-a-lifetime experience with the K9 unit at Emperor’s Palace.
Mr Speaker,
I am sure all of the Council will join our Mayoral Committee and me in thanking the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department for their service and wishing many more decades of progress in making our city safer.
On 31 January of this year MMC Moseki launched Operation Buya Mthetho.
It is a multi-disciplinary initiative that involves officials from the EMPD, SA Revenue Services (SARS), Home Affairs and other law enforcement agencies to address issues related to hijacked buildings, illegal dumping, illegal water and electricity connections and illegal drug trading, along with other crimes plaguing the city centres.
In the next financial year, the EMPD will deploy an additional 480 Municipal Police Officers to supplement the current force capacity, thereby improving police visibility – an effective deterrent to crime and improved road safety and by–law compliance.
This number may be increased in future, as the Mayoral Committee in March resolved all departments should prepare and submit reports on critical skills and human resources requirements not catered for in the 2022/23 draft budget.
In the coming financial year:
EMPD services will become more accessible with the Edleen and Benoni precinct stations opening;
Public-Private Partnerships will be sought to grow the EMPD’s Safer City initiative: and,
Awareness campaigns on Motor Vehicle Registration; Driver’s License and Testing Centre services will also be run to bolster compliance and revenue.
Together with the EMPD, our Disaster and Emergency Management Services do excellent work when the worst events befall our residents, our businesses, and visitors.
Our Mayoral Committee members and I have been out numerous times to witness the bravery and selfless service of these departments, such as with the recent floodings of informal housing built below flood lines in Tembisa.
I want to congratulate EMPD and Disaster and Emergency Management Services further on the excellent example they set to all other departments in terms of response times, proactive probing of problem areas and hotspots, and especially proactive and timeous communication to citizens and stakeholders both during and outside of emergencies.
This ability and willingness to communicate proactively and timeously with our citizens is something that we have instructed the City Management to ensure is replicated across all other departments, particularly our key service frontline delivery departments such as Energy, Water and Sanitation and Roads and Stormwater.
The Departments of Communications and Branding, Customer Relations Management and Information and Communications Technology, and the Key Accounts Management unit need to create mechanisms to ensure meaningful and aligned omnichannel service delivery communications relating to service delivery issues both in and outside of emergency and failure events.
This means that they also need to become better at informing our ratepayers and residents of services that are available to them, that they may not necessarily be aware of.
Such more coordinated communication must be driven strategically from the City Manager’s office. A cross-departmental strategy and action plan will be made a priority in the term of the next City Manager, for which applications closed yesterday.
We need to communicate our appreciation to our residents for their patience and cooperation in many respects, Mr Speaker,
A big thank you for their willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
As stated earlier, nearly 65% of eligible people have been vaccinated in the City of Ekurhuleni. We are very close to the 70% benchmark, advocated for by the World Health Organisation and other entities around the world and in South Africa to halt further disruption and loss of life caused by the pandemic.
Amongst our City of Ekurhuleni employees, the number vaccinated is now 78%, putting us ahead of many other cities and setting an example we can be proud of.
To those in our community who have yet to do so, a word of encouragement to consider the benefits for themselves and those around them of getting vaccinated.
We have rolled out mobile vaccination units and vaccination sites at our schools to make it as easy as possible.
Our city, after all, also needs to be a healthy city, and it can only be one if we all look out for ourselves as well as for each other.
Under the stewardship of MMC Lethoko, our primary healthcare workers will work hard to provide extended healthcare services continuing into the next financial year: 19 of our Clinics are currently providing Primary Health Care services on Saturdays.
The Department continues to implement the seven pillars of the Drug and Substance abuse programme, including:
1.) Demand Reduction
2.) Harm reduction
3.) Supply Reduction,
4.) The Healing Continuum,
5.) Sustaining groups,
6.) Capacity building,
7.) and Advocacy.
The appointment process for the Local Drug Action Committees (LDAC) has been completed and the LDAC will be launched by the end of April 2022.
This is part of a bigger behavioural change programme we are targeting at the youth that also pays attention to issues such as life skills, career choices, gender-based violence, HIV, and teenage pregnancies.
It is our objective to reach at least 3000 at-risk youths in the next financial year.
Mr Speaker,
Despite the achievements and objectives, I have already addressed, it must not be lost from sight or mind that we are still very much a city at risk.
On our accession to the office, we found a city with:
• a collection rate of around 84%, compared to the budgeted 90%;
• cash on hand deteriorated to a 14-days reserve, which we have since improved to a 21-day reserve, with some way to go to meet National Treasury’s 30-day minimum requirements;
• a Moody’s downgrade at the end of November 2021, necessitating an R500m reduction in borrowing, thus impacting negatively on capital expenditure.
This means that we need to be both disciplined in our service delivery, as well as in our finances to achieve our back-to-basics ethos to the benefit of our ratepayers and residents.
In comparison with the adjustment budget adopted in February, we have increased our surplus for the next financial year from R140m to R316m, rising to around R500m for the outer two years of the Medium Term Revenue and Expenditure Framework.
If we do not signal strong support from the Council in favour of achieving these surpluses, the message from the credit rating agencies is that the City of Ekurhuleni will be downgraded further.
We are centralising procurement of information and communication technology, office furniture and vehicle registration and licensing to promote efficiencies.
We have also requested an investigation of fleet management options as opposed to the outright purchase of vehicles for cost savings and loss reductions.
Continued and expanded services to the indigent are a vital part of our commitment as the Multi-Party Coalition to the poor.
We have drafted a debt rehabilitation programme which we plan to send to Council for approval. This much-needed assistance is vital for our communities.
We anticipate the debt relief will be available to qualifying applicants from 1 July 2022 to 31 December 2022.
Furthermore, a 2% discount will be offered to all ratepayers who pay their accounts and keep them up to date for 12 consecutive months from July 2022 onwards.
Then, a note to the businesses, parastatals and government entities operating in the City of Ekurhuleni: The practice of sustained non-current debt not being paid up is negatively impacting the city’s finances. This will necessitate tighter control through service disconnections for any debt over 45 days.
We are also aware that there are practices by some industrial clients to bypass electricity metering resulting in significant losses in the city. Where these are uncovered, the perpetrators will be brought to book.
The City will enact stricter controls and measures for any consumers found to have bypassed or tampered with metering equipment.
By 30 June 2023, our objective is absolutely to once again have achieved a 90% collection rate, which will put our city on a much better footing to expand on our back-to-basics service delivery ambitions.
Should we follow this back-to-basics trajectory until the 2026 end of the current political term, we will once again have achieved:
• an investment-grade status,
• have 30 to 90 days cash on hand,
• a collection rate of 95%; and,
• adequate cash reserves to ensure our resilience should climate change risks, pandemic risks or unexpected conflicts again quicken the currents.
Mr Speaker,
With 52% of our city comprising dolomitic land and with many of our settlements being built on that land, the City is making the prevention and rehabilitation of sinkholes a term priority.
We no longer want our residents to live in fear of their homes disappearing as ground collapses and will prioritise the repair of leaking and aging infrastructure in these dolomitic areas.
Under MMC Hart, City Planning is hard at work to protect and improve our City’s build environment, starting with a review of our Municipal and Regional spatial development frameworks.
These help determine where we work, sleep and play, protecting our residential areas from the invasion of harmful industrial practices and protecting our parks and open spaces from being developed indiscriminately.
National legislation requires that they be reviewed from time to time and the new administration will embrace these reviews not just for compliance but to ensure we develop our City responsibly.
To show that the City is serious about illegal land use and building contraventions, we will be working closely with our corporate legal teams to prosecute criminally those who contravene the City’s town planning by-laws.
We will also look to introduce a system of fines to prevent having to ‘end up in court’ at the ratepayer’s expense.
Furthermore, the department will be reviewing outdated town planning policies such as creches and accommodation establishments, to bring them into line with new legislation and trends, which will be done in-house saving the City the costs of consultants.
We will be assisting creches in informal settlements specifically, to ensure their compliance, thus increasing their opportunities to access grant funding.
In our efforts to make it easier to ‘do business with and in the City, we are hopeful that the electronic processing of all development applications and process will soon be available on an online platform.
Our grand objective is to by the end of the political term in 2026 have facilitated at least R50bn of investment into the City of Ekurhuleni.
Our intention is not to follow through on establishing an Economic Development Agency and a recommendation to Council to rescind such a costly and unnecessary action will follow soon.
Instead, our approach will be to improve investor relations, re-engineer and optimise investment transmission and decision-making.
We will do this by empowering the Ekurhuleni Investment Committee with preliminary decision-making powers and investigate the conversion of existing structures into VIP desks for prestige development projects.
We also plan to initiate an Online Investment Facilitation system.
Our targets for the next financial year are to create 10 000 work opportunities, R100m in grant funding, R24m in rental revenue through municipal trading places and the empowerment of 500 SMMEs and cooperatives.
Third-party funding will be sourced from the Presidential Employment Stimulus, the Expanded Public Works Programmes, NSFAS Community Bursaries awards, company placements and internships, public employment stimulus programmes and international donor funding.
We will also implement the Business Licensing and Trading Permits Online System and 29 Township Business Hubs and facilities will be further optimised to enable the township economy.
The Tembisa Township Economic Development Strategy will be implemented through the City Support Programme & Neighbourhood Development Grant.
The Multi-Party Coalition has also resolved that the City of Ekurhuleni must commence reviews of the Aerotropolis Initiative, the Economic Development Strategy and the Growth and Development Strategy 2055 for any updates that are required.
There will be no place to accommodate vanity projects for our City in these reviews.
Such updates will specifically consider the changed nature of the post-pandemic environment, latest developments in relation to the value retention and creation by business, advances in digitisation, and sustainability requirements
In closing, Mr Speaker,
The road ahead will not be an easy one. Multi-Party Coalition Governance is not an easy form of democracy.
It requires teamwork, patience, and resilience. It will require us to fight for the idea of a government that works for its residents.
Such a turning point in history reminds me of the inspirational words of the late anti-apartheid activist, Helen Suzman who once said:
“I stand for simple justice, equal opportunity, and human rights. The indispensable elements in a democratic society – and well worth fighting for.”
It is this simplification of complex concepts that gives our Back-to-Basics philosophy life.
That’s how we begin to get things done in the City of Ekurhuleni. And that’s how we get the city moving forward.
I want this city to work. Our Multi-Party Coalition wants this city to work
We want our approach to service delivery to tell every resident that they too matter, regardless of their ethnic, social, and financial background, or geographical location. They must know that this municipality is committed to improving their lives.
We want future generations to walk and play in clean neighbourhoods without the fear of being harassed by members of their community. Our children, and particularly our girl children, must be afforded every chance to pursue education and build their futures without impediments of sexual harassment, untimely pregnancies, crime and drug or alcohol addiction
We want residents to stop worrying about medicine or food expiring in their fridges due to multi-day power outages.
We want our Matric students to study with the lights on and have an ongoing internet connection, so their research won’t be disrupted.
To our Mayoral Committee and the city officials who have been aligning with our Multi-Party Coalition mandate, thank you very much.
To my family – my husband Dave and daughter Kiera – for their support: you have been true pillars of strength.
My fellow residents of Ekurhuleni, together we are stronger beyond measure.
Together we can build a united city, One Ekurhuleni. A city with a future brighter than its past.
Our pledge as the Multi-Party Coalition to you, the residents, is that we will work hard. We will work in an open, transparent manner. But most of all, we will work to better this City for you.
So, let’s all work together to make this beautiful story of hope a reality.
Thank you for your time. May God bless you all.
