Efficient and strong municipalities are key to ensuring that South Africa’s economy grows, and jobs are created, says president Cyril Ramaphosa.
The president addressed the District Development Model (DDM) Presidential Imbizo at Tsakane Stadium in Ekurhuleni, Gauteng, on Friday.
The Presidential Imbizo is a platform for communities to interact with government leaders from all three spheres of government on service delivery challenges, and for the executive to respond to the community on what they are doing to resolve those issues.
“We have said as the Government of National Unity, our key priority is to grow the economy, and to create jobs and fight poverty. But to do this, we need strong municipalities. It is municipalities that are the engine room of development because they provide the services to our people but they also are economic engine rooms.
“We want our municipalities to work efficiently. To our councillors, we should not be continuously hearing that our people don’t even know their councillors. That must come to an end. Councillors have been elected to serve the people and they must show themselves in the community. They must hold meetings with our communities. We must not wait for an Imbizo to come and listen to our people raising their concerns,” the president said.
Turning to the City of Ekurhuleni municipality, president Ramaphosa said it is one of South Africa’s most important hubs.
“The Ekurhuleni Municipality is well positioned as an economic driver of job creation. Ekurhuleni is a major transportation hub. But apart from that… it is the manufacturing capital of our country. Ekurhuleni plays a very important role in the life of our province, and in the life of our country and our economy.
“It is home to Africa’s largest and busiest airport… OR Tambo International Airport. It’s also a major centre for freight corridors in our country. This makes the metro a substantial economic player because manufacturing is one of the key contributors to the GDP,” he said.
President Ramaphosa acknowledged, however, that service delivery in the area must be improved. He assured the community gathered at the imbizo that government has heard their cries.
“We want to improve the services that are delivered to our people. We know that service delivery is one of the key challenges and particularly water and electricity.
“We are going to be giving more focus on water…building new reservoirs, increasing our bulk water delivery. We are also going to be focusing on housing. Housing shortage is one of challenges many of our people face and we will address that,” he said.
Another area of concern raised by community members is crime and the President said Police Minister Senzo Mchunu is focusing “on how we can deal with extortion, the construction mafia and gender-based violence”.
“Those men who play football with the women of our country must stop and we are going to be focusing on that. Gender based violence is a pandemic and our people are working in a very focused manner on that,” he said.
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