Excellence in service delivery will become the norm in Johannesburg, says the City’s Executive Mayor, Councillor Mpho Parks Tau.

By Ian Armitage

Delivering his State of the Nation Address in March, President Jacob Zuma said South Africa’s goal was “clear” - we want a country with “decent employment opportunities,” he said, with “modern infrastructure and a vibrant economy and where the quality of life is high. We all have a responsibility to work hard to make this a reality."

It is an ambitious goal and one that is shared by Johannesburg’s new Executive Mayor, Councillor Mpho Parks Tau.

Despite the critics (“The billing issue is the worst crisis to.hit joburg since the turn of democracy and Tau was responsible for it. Yet the ANC think he is fit to lead?” one South Africa Magazine reader said), mayor Tau is an optimist, hopeful and confident about the future of the city, believing that, going forward, “things can only change for the better”.

He is determined to prove any critics wrong.

“Joburg will continue to revitalise itself, boost its energy, regenerate its lustre, retain its magnetism and incredible vibe,” he says.

Tau began his five-year term on May 19, the day after local government elections, and he was elected and sworn in as mayor on Thursday 26 May at the council chambers in Braamfontein.

He took over from Amos Masondo, who served for 10 years, and was the only Joburg mayor to have occupied office for that long.

In his acceptance speech, Tau said he was poised to move the city on to a new developmental growth path. “It will not be business as usual,” he vowed.

He was willing to work together with all political parties and stakeholders, he said. “This will enable us to find workable solutions for the diverse range of developmental challenges facing Joburg as we move towards our vision to become a world class African city.”

Tau said the city was listening “to the people” and that there had been “lots of complaints about local government". He is committed to addressing all of the city’s challenges, while building a local government that is more responsive, accountable, effective and efficient.

"We need to improve the performance of the management and staff as the organisation," he said.
"By that I mean, we need to make sure that we improve accountability of the management, of staff and to ensure that everybody is held accountable for the work they are employed to do.

"The people of Johannesburg, clearly during the election campaign articulated to us quite clearly that they need value for their money. All employees of the city must work hard to make sure that we improve service delivery."

Tau says going forward the city of Johannesburg approach was about consolidating the programme of transformation.

He also said that the city needs to look at the sustainable practices in relation to water, electricity and waste management.

"The city needs to improve repairs and maintenance of the infrastructure," he said.

At present, 95 percent of Joburg citizens have access to basic services, including quality water, reliable electricity and decent sanitation, Tau tells South Africa Magazine.

He also says Johannesburg is a “desirable destination”.

“We transformed Johannesburg into a desirable destination for trade tourism and investment, a proud and successful host of major events,” he explains. “The task now is to build on Johannesburg’s legacy and take the achievements of the city to a higher level. According to the MasterCard survey released in July 2011, the City of Johannesburg is the third most visited city in Africa and the Middle East and the most visited Sub-Saharan city, The MasterCard Index of Global Destination Cities ranks cities by their total inernaitonal visitor arrivals and the cross-border spending by the same visitors.

“I want to give the people of Joburg the assurance that we will not let up in our efforts to help create a better Joburg through the building of better communities.”

The city is currently embarking on a '90-Day programme' -- an Accelerated Service Delivery Programme -- that is focused on “getting the basics right and sustaining it into the future”. Tau says it will run until September and is looking at issues of basic service provision such as potholes, faulty traffic lights, incorrect billing and insufficient enforcement of by-laws. “We are building our future on the successes achieved in the previous decade of democratic local governance including the stabilisation of our financial position, the development of as strong governance model, successful urban renewal projects in Soweto and the inner city and the implementation of flagship projects such as the Nelson Mandela Bridge and Constitution Hill,” Tau says. "But we also identified important challenges relating to service delivery, managerial weaknesses and long-term development programmes that must be initiated.

“For us to focus on the long-term and strategic imperatives we need to sort out the basis service delivery in the city and do so in a sustainable way."

The city is putting in place a strengthened system of performance management for senior officials and will set ambitious targets and key performance indicators to ensure positive outcomes.

"We need to address the extreme inequalities in our society, create decent employment and restructure our economic base to meet the needs of all people in the city, especially the poor," Tau adds.

As part of this Johannesburg has started a revision of its Growth and Development Strategy (GDS), aimed at addressing longer-term challenges facing the city, such as urbanisation; climate change; the sustainability of water resources; energy; and poverty and unemployment.

“This will require a radical change to our modes of operation, for example, a change in waste management processes to move towards a reduction and recycling of waste or the way the city procures services in the market,” says Tau. “The GDS revision will include a broad process of consultation with city stakeholders and outside experts, leading up to a city-wide Summit later in the year.”

Tau, it seems, wants what we all want: a prosperous Joburg.

“We need to take a fresh look at the GDS to ensure that its goals and directives still meet the needs of a dynamic urban environment,” he says. “We will sit and we will talk to the residents of Johannesburg and we will have a meaningful conversation about the challenges in our city, such as possible water scarcity - expected demand will exceed supply shortly and how do we mitigate this; rising acid mine water tables in some parts of our city; potential dangers for our infrastructure; the shortage of landfill sites and what this means for our waste management practices; energy security and load shedding; the impact of climate change; youth unemployment and youth development ; Infrastructure development and financing ; poverty and under-development ; food security; HIV/AIDS and manageable diseases ; crime; and traffic safety.

“We have a lot to discuss,” he adds. “We have also realised that the future sustainable development of the city requires a concerted effort from all those who have an interest in the future sustainability of the city of Johannesburg.

“Social partnerships with residents, communities, businesses, organised civil society, faith-based organisations and other spheres of government, are crucial to address these issues.”

The first draft of the will soon be released for public comment and consultation. The final document will be adopted for the next five years

“As part of our commitment to inclusivity, we intend to embark on a broad GDS outreach process in order to allow all Joburg citizens to be part of future agenda setting,” Tau says. “We want to inspire our citizens and capture the imagination of everyone who calls Johannesburg their home. Through this process we will be bold and open about the challenges we face and work collectively to produce a strategy that is not only visionary and path- breaking but more importantly one that is realistic and implementable.

“This intensive city-wide public consultation process will run during the months of August and September 2011 culminate in a GDS Summit in October 2011.”

Tau is focused on ensuring improvement in the quality of services the city provides.

“We should ensure this through investment in repairs and maintenance of our current infrastructure,” he said in his first budget speech. “We also need to ensure that all employees in our city serve the people of Johannesburg, with honesty and diligence.

“We have focused extensive attention on recognising those areas of our work that need significant improvement, as well as developing concrete plans of action to ensure that our citizens continue to see visible improvements in their daily lives,” he continued. “We also acknowledge that fundamental transformation of the city depends on a highly efficient and functional environment. The approach adopted in addressing service delivery issues was to develop a comprehensive and integrated approach for each priority area.”

One of those priority areas, as anyone living in the city knows, is electricity. In recent weeks there have been several power outages in areas such as Observatory, Kensington and other areas in the north-eastern suburbs. The suburb of Noordgesig had a blackout that lasted for almost 33 hours, which lead violent service delivery protest.

“We will do everything in our power to ensure that electricity supply remains uninterrupted across the city,” says Tau. “We have also increased our response team’s availability on weekends so that there is no repeat of such incidents.”

Cable theft and illegal connections are the biggest contributing factors to power outages. Tau has promised to “crack down” on gangs operating to destroy infrastructure: “We will continue to pursue the representation made to the Minister of Justice by Mayor Masondo in April 2011, motivating for strong prosecution and sentencing of cable theft crimes,” he says.

For the next challenge let’s refer back to the angry reader who contacted us to say: ““The billing issue is the worst crisis to.hit Joburg since the turn of democracy and tau was responsible for it. Yet the ANC think he is fit to lead?”

Billing is a major problem. At least it was, says Tau. “We are all aware that the objectives of the Phakama Project were to redress historical anomalies in our revenue, billing and property value chain and to improve the customer experience,” he said in his budget speech. “We recognise that although the system has stabilised, there were a number of challenges post-implementation. We intervened and are beginning to see some results in areas such as query resolution and revenue collection.

“Although we are seeing progress, we remain extremely concerned about on-going billing challenges that impact on the quality of services that our customers are experiencing on a daily basis.

“It is not acceptable for people to wait long periods of time to have calls answered, or have calls dropped when they eventually get through.

“Managers and employees need to understand and appreciate the gravity of their actions or non-actions and the implications thereof at a much broader level. Some of these challenges are also gaining attention from quarters such as the Public Protector, the Consumer Council and the Auditor-General (AG).

“In fact a meeting in preparation for finalising the Auditor-General’s report, revealed some challenges which warranted our urgent attention.

“In this new term of office we commit to investing in interventions... Over the short- to medium-term, our focus will be on ensuring that we become more responsive to our residents. This means that it cannot be business as usual. We have always said that the issue of systems are distinct from human errors. We will not tolerate incompetence.

“Our attitude to our management and employees is that of a partner in addressing these issues. We also extend a hand of partnership to communities and residents to work together with us in finding solutions and to help realise our objectives.”

Tau is committed to finding workable solutions for the diverse range of developmental challenges facing the city of Johannesburg.

“We are convinced that the city has a clear roadmap for delivery – both in the immediate and short term as well as in developing a process for long term development,” he concludes. “The city of Johannesburg is poised for an exciting new chapter in its history and let us all work together to help create a better Joburg through the building of better communities.”

Image: Supplied by The City of Johannesburg