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The Democratic Alliance’s record in local government shows that DA-run municipalities deliver more effectively and meaningfully than ANC ones. This is important because the DA has proven to be a credible alternative to the ANC, which has failed to fulfil the myriad promises it has made to South Africans over the years, especially those living in Nelson Mandela Bay: a metro brimming with beauty, talent, potential and, sadly, problems.

This is why the Democratic Alliance is here today – to show how our vision for clean, efficient government has worked in other municipalities and can work here in Nelson Mandela Bay as well. We know that residents are fed up with the corruption, financial mismanagement and lack of accountability amongst local government officials, but it doesn’t have to be like this. The DA offers a refreshing alternative that can deliver for all.

The best way to understand this is to compare the DA’s record in the City of Cape Town to the ANC’s in Nelson Mandela Bay. When you do so, you see two cities moving in opposite directions. Since 2006, when the DA took over from the ANC in Cape Town, the city has steadily improved in service delivery, political accountability, financial management and quality of life. Today it sets the standard of excellence for all metros in each of these areas. In contrast, Nelson Mandela Bay has been gradually declining through weak service delivery, political corruption, shambolic finances and a stagnating quality of life. This decline has now become quite apparent. It’s time for a change.

In this press briefing, we want to share the facts regarding the difference between service delivery under the DA, and service delivery under the ANC. We aim to show that this difference makes a difference.

Part 1: Service delivery

It is the responsibility of local government to deliver services. It is the face of accessible government for most people. It is arguably the most important sphere of government, especially for those at the bottom end of the economic ladder, who rely on local administrations to deliver those essential components of opportunity – basic services, like water, electricity and sanitation.

So which party is fulfilling its service delivery promises?

According to the Universal Household Access to Basic Services (UHABS) report – compiled by the National Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs last year – the DA-run City of Cape Town is the best performing metro in the country in every service delivery metric. The report uses metrics from four basic service delivery areas: water, sanitation, refuse collection and electricity. For each, it provides the percentage of households in the municipality that have access to a basic level of that particular service. The report shows that the City is comprehensively outperforming other ANC-run metros in each of the four areas that were reviewed, including Port Elizabeth, as shown here.

Most impressively, the report shows that the percentage of residents who have access to all four basic services – universal access – is far higher than in any ANC metro. 91% of residents have access to all four of these services in Cape Town.

This level of delivery has profound effects on the opportunities it affords the poor. Indeed, the DA’s approach to delivery prioritises the needs of the currently disadvantaged. To take just one example, residents of Cape Town can register on an indigent database in order to receive 350 litres of water per day for free. This is the highest free allocation of water in the country. The City's SMS line, and 24-hour emergency call centre line, help residents experiencing any water or sanitation problem.

Contrast this record with the situation in Nelson Mandela Bay. Earlier this year, the ANC-run municipality announced enormous cuts to major programmes. These included the decision to cut funds from a programme designed to eradicate use of the bucket system in the metro, from R75m to just R1m. This is despite the fact that some 22,500 people still have to use buckets to dispense of their personal waste. Such a decision reveals how the council’s financial mismanagement is impinging on its ability to deliver services to the poor.

Down the road in Baviaans municipality, the only municipality in the province run by the DA, the local administration does not have the same resources as Nelson Mandela Bay. However, through shrewd budgeting and efficient spending, it has managed to completely eradicate the bucket system – a fact which won the municipality a Vuna Award for Service Delivery this year from the National Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.

Part 2: Political accountability

One of the reasons why service delivery lags in Nelson Mandela Bay is because the city council is not held accountable for its poor performance. The metro has been wracked by scandal after scandal as forensic investigations reveal the extent to which top officials utilise public funds in an inappropriate manner.

According to the Auditor-General (AG), in the 2009/10 financial year, irregular expenditure to the amount of R23.3 million was incurred as a result of contracts being awarded without following the supply chain management regulations and payments being made to suppliers in which councillors have business interests. R4 million was wasted due to payments that were made in vain and in instances where reasonable care was not exercised. The AG also stated that it was evident that the accounting officer and management did not exercise effective oversight over compliance with laws and regulations. And he noted that several investigations into alleged transgressions were currently underway, including: tender irregularities, housing irregularities, procurement irregularities, theft and abuse of municipal assets, payroll related transactions and BEE fronting. Of course, as Friendly City residents know, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The recently leaked Kabuso report suggests that corruption at the council is massive.

Earlier this year the Local Government MEC, Mlibo Qoboshiyane, revealed to the Eastern Cape Legislature that R19m of Nelson Mandela Bay’s municipal funds had been transferred irregularly into various bank accounts. This came after former MEC for Local Government, Sicelo Gqobana, commissioned a forensic investigation by Kabuso Risk Management to look into much larger corrupt tender deals within the municipality. At the heart of the investigation was a probe into the proposed R4.5 billion Madiba Bay Leisure Park development along Marine Drive in Port Elizabeth. It also looked into other tourism projects such as the R713m Embizweni project, R31m Beachview Development and R30,9m Van Stadens project. It was alleged that regulations governing lease contracts with some developers were flouted and that politicians profited from these lucrative deals.

The report suggests that the rot went to the very top. Former executive mayor, Nceba Faku, now ANC regional chairperson, was allegedly implicated. We still await the full contents of the report, but believe that those who acted in an unethical and illegal manner must be held to account. Unfortunately, however, in a number of cases, municipal employees were suspended pending disciplinary proceedings, but their suspensions were lifted just as the disciplinary hearings were about to be concluded. Not only does such inaction breed a culture of corruption, it also negatively impacts the economic and financial welfare of the municipality and the province.

The City of Cape Town faced similar scandals when the ANC ran it between 2001 and 2006. But since the DA took over, the metro has become a model of clean, efficient and transparent government. One of the first things the DA did was to open up the mayoral committee (Mayco) meetings to the public, which had previously been closed under the ANC. Here in Nelson Mandela Bay, those doors remain closed as the Mayco team works in secret.

The DA also opened up the municipal tendering process, reducing certain BEE restrictions that had previously favoured only large, politically connected businesses, allowing many more small and medium-sized black businesses to successfully tender for contracts. Today Cape Town supports thousands more businesses with tenders because it is open, free and fair.

Part 3: Finances

The question of political accountability goes to the heart of each city’s respective financial fortunes. Here in Nelson Mandela Bay, we face an unprecedented cash crisis that has severely cut into our social service spending commitments. We overspent during the World Cup by R538 million, which has ended up forcing us to slash some R790 million from what was already a depleted budget, much of which will negatively affect the poor. Since we also only spent 80% of our capital budget for the year, the Bay has had to stop building several clinics, revise the provision of free electricity and freeze plans to eradicate the bucket toilet system. Even our housing provision programmes have become unglued because the province has mooted taking over our housing delivery function due to the Bay’s financial chaos. This was not supposed to be the legacy of our wonderful World Cup, which was intended to catapult us into a prosperous future, not hamstring us as we try to move forward.

Compare this to the DA’s record of financial management in the City of Cape Town, which recently earned its fifth consecutive unqualified audit under a DA government – a 100% record. Cape Town maintained its excellent long-term credit rating of Aa2.za for the fifth consecutive year, with Moody’s International credit rating agency expressing confidence in the financial leadership and management of the City (Nelson Mandela Metro has a lower, Aa3.za rating). It also maintains an excellent rates collection percentage, which allows it to spend more on the poor and makes monthly financial reports open to the public so that residents know exactly the state of their city’s finances.

A similar record has been established in DA-run Baviaans, which also won a Vuna Award as the best municipality in the province for revenue collection – a key component of service delivery, since it equips local administrations with the resources to deliver to the people.

Part 4: Quality of life

Excellent financial management is one of the reasons why residents who live in DA-run municipalities feel more satisfied with the quality of service delivery than those living in ANC-run ones.

A recently released TNS research survey, which polled 2 000 people across the country’s main metropolitan areas late last year, found that the level of satisfaction with service delivery in Cape Town exceeds that in any other metro. The survey found that in Cape Town, 57% of residents are satisfied with service delivery and 39% are unsatisfied. While this shows that there is room for improvement, it also shows that the DA is doing far better than the ANC in Nelson Mandela Bay, where only a meagre 29% of residents are satisfied with service delivery, while a majority of 65% is unsatisfied.

Why is this? Because it is difficult to be satisfied when you don’t have a metro police force anymore, unlike every other metro in the country, and especially unlike Cape Town, where its Ghost Squad, Drug Busters Unit and Copperheads Unit have helped make communities safer. It is difficult to be satisfied when two of your best beaches lose their Blue Flag status because the council has failed to keep them clean, unlike Cape Town, which has the most Blue Flag beaches in the country. It is difficult to be satisfied when the party of government, which is supposed to be busy providing good governance, is preoccupied with internal faction disputes, unlike Cape Town, which enjoys stable, focused leadership. And it is also difficult to be satisfied when you don’t know whether you have enough water in your reservoirs to survive the next year, unlike Cape Town, which seeks proactive solutions to its periodic water challenges well in advance.

That same innovative spirit resides in DA-run Baviaans, which established a service delivery help desk for residents to ensure that delivery problems are addressed as quickly as possible. In fact, it has taken the R50 000 prize money it won from the two Vuna Awards and put it toward enhancing the service this help desk offers.

Conclusion

This comparison between the path that Nelson Mandela Bay is on with its current leadership, versus that of the City of Cape Town with its DA leadership, paints a picture of two cities with diverging prospects. On the one path we find Nelson Mandela Bay, which is failing to maintain service delivery standards, hold errant politicians to account, manage its money properly or offer satisfaction to its residents. On the other path is Cape Town, which sets the standard for service delivery in the country, crafts sensible laws to keep councillors accountable, manages public funds with prudent fiscal stewardship and offers increasing satisfaction to its residents each year.

But these cities’ differing fortunes have nothing to do with the talent, energy or potential of their residents. No, Nelson Mandela Bay residents are every bit as creative and motivated as those in Cape Town. What the Bay has lacked thus far is wise political leadership. The politicians who run the city council now are unable to unleash the potential of this metro and its people. They are too busy maximising their own personal gains to deliver effectively to the people for whom they are responsible.

Yet that can change if voters demand it. And the only way that it will change is if they vote out the ANC and vote in the DA, which has a proven track record of good, clean, transparent, effective government. Indeed, the DA has distinguished itself in South Africa as the party of action, delivery, responsiveness and integrity. We ask that, in the upcoming local government election, the people in the Friendly City consider the impact that effective leadership could have on them and their communities, then place a cross next to the DA, for it is the only party that can help this city live up to its full potential.