Mayor of delivery and plans

The re-elected Tshwane metro mayor, Randall Williams, intends continuing with a journey he started just over 12 months ago: to approach his work on service delivery on evidence and on data collected on the ground.

He is one of the few mayors who knows how many potholes there are in his municipality and how many have been fixed at a particular time.

As he begins the new term, following the 1 November local government election, Williams already knows which streets lights need to be repaired and which potholes must be filled.

When Williams was installed as Tshwane mayor during his initial 12 months stint at the Mayor’s Parlour on 30 October last year, he immediately adopted what he terms an “evidence-based and data-driven” approach to service delivery.

Later, he upgraded this from maintenance and repair to the introduction of capital projects that ensure durability of the work done.

This approach had paid dividends for the Democratic Alliance, the party Williams represented at the polls.

He spoke in an interview with The Citizen and was optimistic about the DA’s prospects after victory.

With his method, said Williams, “we look at the data. Every time we see various improvements that have been made.

“We must not only look at service delivery but also consider the outputs – to see whether the output is at a satisfactory level,” Williams said.

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When he first became mayor, Williams and his team held their first war-room meeting in mid-November 2020. At the time, the data showed only 35% of Tshwane’s street lights were working.

Since November last year, the shortfall was covered with 85% of the lights working by the time of the last elections.

The plan was dynamic and the process was monitored closely. The municipality decided to hit two birds with one stone and not only do repair and maintenance, but include capital projects with a view to sustaining the work.

Two such capital projects envisaged was to redesign the street light poles so that they were vandalism resistant.

The municipality realised that in almost all street lights wires and switches often went missing to be sold as scrap metals.

“We noticed that the street lights would work only for a few days. It is especially the case in some areas, the northern, north-western and north-eastern areas, where metallic streetlights were sawed down and chopped into pieces to be sold at scrap yards.”

To overcome this, in terms of the new capital project plan, the poles were redesigned in such a way that the switches were no longer located at the bottom but right at the top of the pole, so that thugs could not steal the cables.

All metallic poles were replaced with concrete poles. “So this is no longer maintenance and repair, but capital projects” that improved the overall picture, he said.

“Since November last year, we fixed over 30 000 potholes in Tshwane and we keep track of how many metal parts we have replaced. To sustain the projects, and ensure the job was done cost-effectively, the metro produced its own hot-mix tar.

We don’t buy the bitumen anymore,” Williams said. The switch to hot-mix came when the city realised that cold mix was washed away when it rained, causing the pothole to reappear. Williams said he was passionate about his personal 10-point plan manifesto that he began with his short reign since 2020.

At the top is stringent financial management in the metro. “We have to turn the finances of the city around,” he said.

The DA inherited a deficit of R4.3 billion on the operating budget. Within eight months in office since last November, this was reduced to R914 million.

“How did we do that? We cut expenses, but we also increased revenue. For instance, in one month last year we collected R2.2 billion and the other months we collected between R2.4 billion or R2.5 billion.”

Delivery of basic services and investment remain tops, as well as online automation for applications, he said.

– ericn@citizen.co.za