Inside Report with Michael Basch: The ‘mental’ state of the city
Last week was the State of the City Address with all its glitz and glamour, pomp and ceremony. The Mayor delivered an epic speech, an especially long speech that is, three and half hours of how fantastic the city is under the leadership of the ruling party.
To quote the Mayor “this speech was too big for those trying to defeat the ANC”.
What this really means is that any opposing view on the mayor’s speech should be rendered as inconsequential. Even IRASA Cllr Izak Berg was not immune to the Mayor’s wrath as he was called a bogus DA member with racist tendencies for his inputs to the speech.
The message is clear, in a metro with 28 per cent unemployment rate, which is plagued by service delivery issues; if you disagree you must be racist.
Some of the highlights include the report on the R46.8 million spent on new fire stations. What it does not say, is that there is no equipment for these – heck there is not even furniture.
The Mayor also stated that there would be an amount of R213 million set aside for the fixing of potholes between now and June – except only on targeted roads. Still not sure what a targeted road is, but will be following that up.
As for the poor spending on Capex “poor planning, ineffective project management, lack of technical capacity and ineffective supply chain management” was the Mayors reason for the failing on our capital expenditure. For the non-financial people out there, that’s the money meant to build new infrastructure. Of course I have been beating this drum for four years now, good to see that the Mayor finally agrees.
Finally the Mayor has also decided to “reshuffle his cabinet” by replacing almost all of his members of the mayoral committee. This prompted a vote to replace the current chairs of the section 79 oversight committees in a process that once again proved that rules are made to be bent, broken and pretty much made up to suit a predetermined outcome.
In conclusion it would be wrong to say that there hasn’t been growth and development in our city, surely there has and it has been good, but it could be better, much better and that’s the key. We should be striving for “excellence” and not just “good enough”, and I can’t wait for the day that we have an excellent Mayor and not just a good enough one. But by saying that, I must be a racist.
