/ 3 May 2013

Trevor Fowler meets the press

Trevor Fowler.
Trevor Fowler.

And one gave a little cheer as a latecomer arrived.

Four reporters turned up to cover the event at the gauche Summer Place conference venue near Sandton this week and were outnumbered by council employees. It was billed as "an engagement session" by the city with "stakeholders".

The member of the mayoral committee for finance, Geoffrey Makhubo, helping himself to lamb stew, said that he did have a Twitter account, but never tweeted.

Dressed in a dark suit, city manager Trevor Fowler took a seat at the table with the reporters and told us that he had always seen himself returning to his hometown, Cape Town, which he now considers parochial compared with cosmopolitan Johannesburg. He has been in the hot seat since October 2011 and, partly by way of qualification, served as an MEC for local government in Gauteng about a decade ago. He also has a BSc in civil engineering, and was the chief executive of the presidency under Thabo Mbeki.

Starting in on his lunch (roast vegetables, salad with bocconcini and sun-dried tomato, a slice of rye), he said he wanted to address spatial inequality in the city, but had found it difficult to challenge the inertia of those comfortable in maintaining the status quo. Part of the plan involves what he called transit-oriented development, which will promote development along transport routes, ensuring households have better access to jobs and transport. He said Johannesburg remained one of the most unequal cities in the world, and those earning R10000 and less a month spent between 60% and 70% of their income on transport and food.

He praised the Gautrain and said part of the planning of the bus rapid transit system was to reduce commuters' reliance on taxis. On the state of repair of Johannesburg's roads, "it's not the potholes that's the problem", but that the "roads haven't been maintained over the years because there's a demand for housing".

There was much talk of "key challenges", challenges perhaps better known as "problems" – but Fowler sounded so earnest that you believed him when he said they were working on them. These included the much-publicised billing problem, and the question of attracting the skills of young black professionals who, he said, saw working for the public service as a career-limiting move.

He said Johannesburg had to "be run like a business" and so far this financial year had "borrowed nothing", but planned to spend R100-million over the next decade to address backlogs, and the expansion of city infrastructure.  

Makhubo, in his speech, mentioned the challenge of "occasional missteps" by the metro police, but offered by way of amelioration that the city should be judged on "progress made". He said the city was dirty and was a worry for the council. "If you walk from Commissioner to Bree [streets] it's like going to different towns."

The crowd had swelled a little (an editor had arrived, late), and Fowler, with all the facts seemingly in his head, spoke extemporaneously. He also showed off what would appear to be a useful trait, at least among officials discussing something confidential, of dropping his voice to an indistinct murmur. That, and a good belly laugh.