James Selfe
The Democratic Alliance’s top three priorities for its newly won metros are the launch of its 2019 election campaign, navigating ANC-designed budgets and dealing with dissenting municipal employees.
So far, mayors in the Tshwane, Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay metros have grabbed headlines with announcements on corruption investigations and the prosecution of those implicated in dodgy deals negotiated during the ANC’s era.
But the DA’s federal chairperson James Selfe cautioned the new DA mayors not to be overly preoccupied with the prosecution of suspects implicated in forensic reports. “The strategy is not to exclusively look backwards, but to look proactively forward to create circumstances and conditions to deliver much more effective services to the public,” he told the Mail & Guardian.
Selfe said the party would be rolling out a series of campaigns this year “to demonstrate our commitment to make a difference in the areas where we govern”.
“Nowadays, the election happens in the two-and-half years leading up to the actual vote,” he said.
The party has identified factors inhibiting service delivery, Selfe said. These included inadequate infrastructure preventing expansion projects and that newly won metros were operating on budgets approved by the previous ANC-led council.
He said a lot of infrastructure — such as underground pipes and cabling — was old and was not being maintained. “This is not immediately visible to people but we need to fix it.” The ANC governments had laid down spending priorities that were not aligned to the DA’s manifesto. “It is going to take until July before we can properly draw up a budget aligned to our priorities,” he said.
A further priority was to address dissenting employees who don’t share the DA’s ideology, he said. “There are a lot of people in the [metros] that do not identify with our principles and views. Without purging anybody, we want to ensure that there are people that understand how we want to deliver.”
The new mayors also spoke of priorities specific to their metros. Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba said: “Unemployment is the biggest priority for me. In the event of my administration failing to bring down unemployment to under 20% by 2021, I’m saying, don’t vote me back into office,” the mayor said.
In Nelson Mandela Bay, DA mayor Athol Trollip has prioritised saving water, ensuring efficient waste management and incentivising investment to create jobs, said spokesperson Kristoff Adelbert.
Tshwane mayor Solly Msimanga’s preoccupation for this year is “the attraction of investment which will help the city to deal with its R2-billion deficit and create employment in the city,” said his spokesperson Samkelo Mgobozi.
Msimanga has also found dealing with the capital city’s current budget “extremely problematic and hopes that, when we take our own budget to council, it will recalibrate and rebalance how the city spends its money,” Mgobozi said.