PREZ v MAYOR

CAPE Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has hit back President Cyril Ramaphosa’s attack on the City's service delivery to poor areas in the metropole.

Ramaphosa kicked off the bekgeveg during a session of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on Tuesday, when he said that Mother City bosses were not making the lives of poor people better with a R40 billion, three-year, service delivery budget. 

The president has come under fire for backtracking on telling ANC municipal councillors that Democratic Alliance (DA)-run municipalities are run better than their own last month. 

Addressing a question from DA provincial chief whip Frederick Badenhorst, who asked him to set the record straight, he said: “You may look at the audit, but in the end what matters is the impact on the lives of the people. 

“Other cleverer people say that on a per capita investment, it is significantly lower in townships and informal settlements. 

“Per capita it continues to follow the same racial patterns of the past.”

Maar Hill-Lewis het sy man gestaan and said that the President's efforts at "damage control" fail to accurately represent the state of governance in Cape Town. 

The mayor emphasised Cape Town’s commitment to pro-poor development, pointing out that the City allocates 75 percent of its infrastructure budget directly to lower-income households.

Hill-Lewis wysed: “The President is still trying to do damage control after he dared to speak the truth when he said that Cape Town and other towns governed by the DA are examples to follow. In fact, they are the only examples of progress and good governance in South Africa.

"Where his party governs, there is only decay, corruption, and collapsed services. That is the sea of ruin that the President presides over."

According to the City, Cape Town has outspent Johannesburg and Tshwane combined on infrastructure to date, R25.8 billion versus R22.8 billion, and is on track to outspend all three Gauteng metros combined by the end of 2025/26.

Over the next three years, the City plans to invest an estimated R3.4 billion in informal settlement improvements, including R310 million for water, sanitation, and waste installations, R39 million for electrification, R1.1 billion for bulk services, upgrades, roads, and emergency interventions, and R2.1 billion for BNG housing.

Hill-Lewis added: “The simple, irrefutable fact, is that despite the enormous challenges of poverty and unemployment that South Africans face (also thanks to the ANC), Cape Town is steadily moving forward while every other city in the country is moving backwards."