A view from the top

This March, South Africa will have been under Covid-19 restrictions or lockdown conditions for two years.

While calls are growing louder for the National State of Disaster to be lifted, it should be made clear that non- pharmaceutical measures such as social distancing, wearing face masks and washing hands should continue to be practised alongside vaccinations.

However, I wonder whether, in our haste to get back to our lives, we are perhaps moving on too quickly? Might we be missing an opportunity to stop, take stock and learn important lessons from all that Covid-19 has shown us about the South African reality?

More appropriately, might we be missing an opportunity to learn and respond to important realities, known to us for years and ignored for as long, but so aptly amplified by this global health pandemic?

In the first few days of the first lockdown period in March 2020, it became immediately apparent that the notion of social distancing, self-isolating and keeping ourselves contained in our homes would be virtually impossible for many residents of the City of Johannesburg.
I am referring to the residents of Alexandra and Diepsloot; residents whose informal housing structures are crammed, in their thousands, into tiny spaces able
to accommodate a handful of mansions normally found in Sandton, across the M1 Highway from Alex.

I am referring to residents who share their tiny tin shacks with multiple family members.

In that moment, South Africa’s much-talked-about triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality were advertised for the world to see. But did we learn anything?

Did the scenes of deprivation move leaders to consider, very seriously this time, the need for a truly pro-poor agenda for cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town, and South Africa as a whole?

If not, then this is the agenda I wish to put on the table.

PEOPLE ARE ONBOARD

We have to be a part of a project, rich and poor, where both recognise that the status quo is not sustainable, and support efforts to remedy the situation. My experiences meeting with South Africans and Joburgers across the spectrum, is that they all understand this. It is in fact, politicians who do not.

This is why we are setting about changing the work of government in Johannesburg. As we did between 2016 and 2019, we will continue to cut back on the non-essential, and quite frankly wasteful expenditure, and reprioritise billions towards those who need it most.

We will increase budgets behind informal settlement upgrades and accelerate the electrification programme of informal settlements while we build formal houses. This also means ensuring that households in informal settlements have access to toilets and piped water.

Part of redressing the legacy of the past means tackling our spatial inequality, which has forced people to live on the peripheries of our city and spend 50% of their household income on public transport.

INNER CITY PLANS

The Inner City Rejuvenation Project is key to this because we have to move away from housing people far away from economic opportunities. It is also about taking people out of the abusive relationship with criminal slumlords and getting the private sector to convert these buildings into low-cost affordable housing of a world-class standard.

Another key aspect about the inner city is about catering to the ‘missing-middle’ of the housing market – people who do not qualify for RDP housing but cannot qualify for a bond.

To date, with an estimated 643 bad buildings, 139 properties have been awarded to developers for this precise purpose. They will generate R32 billion in investment, create thousands of construction sector jobs and will house thousands more families.

We have opened extended operating hours clinics, 26 of them to date, so that those who are seeking work opportunities or climbing the ladder of opportunity do not have to choose between work and healthcare.

We have changed the city’s policy of water allowances that once used to offer six kilolitres of water to everyone, rich and poor, and changed it so that only those who fall below a certain household income can receive this benefit. And now, they receive up to 15 kilolitres of free water every month.