Every Tuesday, Ahmed Kajee sits down with mayoral candidates to explore their visions for South Africa’s municipalities. Here is his conversation with Haniff Hoosen, the Democratic Alliance’s mayoral candidate in eThekwini, edited for length and clarity.
Let’s start with the service delivery. There are major issues in terms of refuse removal, water supply and electricity supply. What is your initial strategy to correct that in the municipality?
We have a crisis situation in terms of water, and it’s only gotten worse over the last 10 to 15 years. I used to be a councillor in eThekwini municipality some 25 years ago, and the water loss at that stage was sitting between 10% and 15%. 25 years later, we are now sitting at 65%. Especially over the last five to 10 years, the situation has gotten worse.
Part of our problem is the lack of accountability for the people who are responsible for this mess. We have a leadership in the city that doesn’t have the courage to take action against their own comrades and that’s why we’re in this situation.
Our municipality had announced some 36 months ago a water turnaround strategy, but the situation has gotten worse notwithstanding all of the plans that they have in place. We want to change that. The best way to change it is to hold those people accountable, put the money to work where it’s supposed to. We will have to invest billions of rands into replacing the entire water infrastructure here.
How will you correct those issues?
[The] number one priority for us is to fix this water crisis in the city, but we’re not going to do that if we’re not going to get the financial management right in the city. We’re sitting with massive problems in terms of the way our money is managed. Let me give an example: we’re a city with a R72 billion budget, but there’s R50 billion in the debt book that hasn’t been collected by the municipality. A lot of that money is owed by big business, but the main culprits are government departments and parastatals. Of course, there are also people who are struggling to pay their bills because it’s become so unaffordable in the city.
You speak about the fact that the process of auditing isn’t at a hundred percent. How will you ensure that the processes within your local government are at a hundred percent?
The Auditor General has been making findings against this municipality for a number of years. With those findings come a number of recommendations. One of those things is holding people accountable but year after year the Auditor General makes these findings against eThekwini Municipality and nothing comes out of it. Our irregular expenditure five years ago was sitting at about R700 million; today that’s grown to almost R5 billion, and there’s still no accountability.
There are informal settlements across the city and this is something many of the residents would want addressed.
We have to find more housing opportunities for people so that we can provide dignity to communities. I visited a community in Burlington not too long ago. The municipality spent R61 million to set up a housing development there after people were affected by the floods. After paying R61 million to contractors, there’s not a single house that was built.
We have to clean out the city and get it working again. I’m very committed to making sure that it happens so that the large majority of the people who live in the city can live in a place that we can be proud of. Our city has everything that the world is looking for — we just don’t have the right government. I’m determined to clean up the place and make sure that we provide a clean government that actually provides the services that is required and put the money to work.
I raised my hand not because I’m looking for a job as the mayor. I want to do it for the people of the city and I because I love this place. I’ve lived here all my life. There’s just far too much to lose. I don’t want to be that person who sits back and complains. I want to do something about it.
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Image: Supplied
