Mayor says ANC comes with a ‘wealth of experience’ as he targets service delivery
“We need to ramp up MMC performance. We must have mechanisms to judge each other and hold each other accountable.”
The new Tshwane mayor says his ANC allies “come with a wealth of experience” as he is due to handpick his mayoral committee soon.
The date has not yet been set as a council meeting to elect a new speaker was topmost.
Office of the Speaker spokesperson Vanessa de Sousa said the date for the election would be communicated once confirmed by the city manager, Johann Mettler.
Cope was briefing the media on Wednesday following the election of Dr Murunwa Makwarela as Tshwane mayor on Tuesday.
“I have no doubt in particular to the biggest party – ANC – there is a lot of experience and the proximity with the people are in their wards.
“They are ward councillors and not just PR councillors.”
This follows the ANC-EFF supporting Makwarela towards 112 votes, helping him clinch the mayorship.
Makwarela said he decided to run for mayor 30 minutes before council after being approached by a member of the African Transformation Movement (ATM) and EFF.
He said the collective of parties he had just joined comprised 10 parties.
Makwarela said he and and his allies would be fielding a candidate as a collective decision for speaker.
He said he was unable to pre-empt who as this was a collective decision.
Makwarela said this collective [with allies] was a new phenomenon.
He spoke of his coalition between the DA, ActionSA, Freedom Front Plus, ACDP and IFP in Tshwane as a failed marriage.
“It’s worse when there is multiple partners involved. We have different interests and priorities.”
He said Cope tried to arrive at common compromises on issues, however, they were sidelined on matters for one and a half years – “it became difficult”.
He said to better service delivery, Tshwane would have an agreement between MMCs for delivery targets so performance can be monitored.
“We have missed our service delivery targets by 50% with the coalition at the helm. Now that I am in this role, I can ensure day-to-day targets are met.”
He said he would commit to measure performance indicators for tasks in his administration.
“I have to check key performance targets for waste removal, water provision and electricity.
We need to ramp up MMC performance. We must have mechanisms to judge each other and hold each other accountable.”
He said some MMCs would need training to fully equip them for the scope of their work.
“We will use courses and up-skill members through entities such as SA local government association (Salga) as one repository of knowledge, to up-skill officials.”
Makwarela said these were some of a few mechanisms to create better government.
He said ward committees would be rolled out via the Office of the Speaker.
“The ward committees of 10 will ensure ward councillors are assisted, and report issues in real time to group head of departments.
“Power outages, potholes should be reported in an effective manner.”
He said he would look into the establishment of rapid response teams to attend to service delivery.
“We need a rapid response team to attend to service delivery challenges.”
Makwarela said the city had a lot of problems to deal with including payment backlog, tabling of legislative reports such as budget adjustments and correcting the wrong Tshwane audit committee annual report that was tabled.
“This will be a re-tabling of an annual report, so this should tell you we are in a mess.”
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