EKURHULENI mayor Mzwandile Masina delivered his swan-song State of the City Address on Wednesday following a difficult five-year term aimed at addressing multiple issues affecting the city region, simultaneously and continuously.
He leaves behind a solid legacy after ensuring the implementation of key infrastructure projects such as Bus Rapid Transit and mega Human Settlements that will ensure the city of Ekurhuleni remains a world class African city of the early 21st century.
The city is well on its way to becoming a digital city after Masina’s administration invested in digital infrastructure that will streamline the way it delivers services to the community, including smart grids, payment gateways, e-learning and e-health systems.
Rather than spending his mayoral time in the boardroom, Masina has spent more time knocking on township and informal settlements doors, meeting with ordinary people to address service delivery iissues and communicating the city’s plans to improve their lives.
This was part of the Siyaqhuba Mayoral Outreach Programme.
The programme was adopted as part of a drive towards ensuring that service delivery issues are rapidly responded to and more importantly, the people of the metro are in closer proximity to public representatives.
The programme has unearthed important matters around delays in projects, service delivery issues as well as criminal matters including the extent of hijacked buildings in the City of Ekurhuleni.
Masina also oversaw every major infrastructure developments in town during his five years in office, and solved countless minor problems.
If a pothole appeared, crime was committed or the garbage wasn’t picked up, residents would say, “I’m going to call Mazwawai,” as he is affectionately known in the townships of the East Rand.
The change has been striking, and many areas in Ekurhuleni have undoubtedly been cleaned up and made more desirable.
But that has not always been good news for people living in the city, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of the operational resilience when faced with the threat of service delivery during the midst of a global pandemic,” said Masina on Wednesday.
“It is under these circumstances that Business Continuity Management measures have been put into place to ensure that areas of critical to normal municipal operations have been identified and are capacitated to ensure that service delivery in not disrupted.”
Under his reign, the City of Ekurhuleni has achieved several unqualified audits with clean audits on financial statements since he took in 2016: zero unauthorised expenditure; zero fruitless and wasteful expenditure; and last year, collection rate stood at 91 percent.
Masina has also delivered title deeds to thousands of qualified homeowners.
The title deeds gives the owners a sense of pride and ownership guarantee.
The title deeds were mainly issued during the Mayoral Siyaqhuba outings, where he was accompanied by dozens of youth brigades to assist with the handover of title deeds and housing consumer education.
“A title deed is also a wealth creation asset. The households visits by the youth brigade to families who have not yet collected their title deeds at the customer service centers served as an effective tool to undertake housing consumer education and thereby reducing community apathy,” said Masina.
He has also ensured cooperation and collaboration with both National and Provincial Departments of Human Settlements to undertake housing consumer education and hand over title deeds to the rightful beneficiaries on an ongoing basis.
According to city, uncollected title deeds will be published in the local media and kept at the storage facility with effect from July 2021.
Under his leadership, the city has also created more than 26 000 work opportunities through Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP).
Consequently, short-term opportunities were created during the construction of infrastructure projects within the communities including water and sanitation, roads and storm water, local housing programmes.
One of the most successful programmes implemented through EPWP is a three-year plumber’s apprentice programme, which is towards the end of completion, where 94 trainees will receive a fully accredited plumber’s certificate at the end of the programme.
A total of 454 graduates were also given job opportunities via the work readiness placement programme.
“However, the number could have been more but for the impact of Covid-19,” said Masina.
He further reported that 49 learners completed a full qualification NQF Level 3 learnership programme and 1 150 learners attended short skills courses.
For the extension programme, 240 farmers’ cooperatives were assessed and profiled; and the 26 that were selected will be earmarked for mentorship.
He said the other environmental and social sector programmes such as Siyakhokha, which entailed cleaning of formal and informal trading areas made a huge impact not only on employing the community but also resulted in cleaner informal trading areas and improvement in the city’s rates collection.
Masina said Ekurhuleni’s water security programme remains on track.
“Through the Aqua Leap programme, we are building 29 new reservoirs across the City. Five are completed and another 10 will be completed by June 2021. The remainder will be completed during MTREF. This intervention will add 417 mega litres of storage thus increasing our water storage capacity from 24 hours to 36 hours. We are also going to be intensifying the water leaks programme,” said Masina.
“This is the first time that the City has ever implemented such a massive water programme since its inception in the year 2000. Furthermore, it should be noted that this is the only metro in the country undertaking such a programme. Upon completion of the Northmead tower currently under construction in Benoni, it will not only be the second largest water tower in South Africa but also on the African continent and one of the biggest in the world with a capacity of 5,500,000 litres equivalent to nearly three Olympic size swimming pools, elevated at 33 metres above the ground.”
Masina said today, over 921 000 households are being provided with access to clean running water; 88.9 km of water pipes were replaced /refurbished; 364km of water pipe constructed; and 95% leaking water pipes were repaired within 48 Hours.
A total of 914 918 households also have access to sanitation, according to Masina.
For the first time since the dawn of the democracy, Masina has also announced plans to build a university that will serve the people of Ekhurhuleni.
“We have found that we are the only metro that does not have a university and we think that beyond educating our citizens, this university will create a new economic hub in our city,” said Masina.
Ekurhuleni residents say there are major advantages in students being able to stay at their parents’ or guardians’ homes when undergoing tertiary education.
Unfortunately, there are no university facilities available in Ekurhuleni, 21 years after the arrival of democracy, other than the satellite campus of Unisa, a relatively minor satellite campus of Vaal University of Technology.
During his state of the nation last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the university would specialise in science and innovation.
- Inside Metros