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Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale says the primary task of his department is to deracialise apartheid cities and towns and create new ones.

He was speaking on Sunday evening in Stellenbosch at the Leadership Development Programme offered by the University of Cape Town for the country’s metropolitan municipality’s executive mayors and municipal managers.

“That is what we are doing here, it’s a huge rectification of what we call the correction of the apartheid spatial development waste,” he told the local government leadership.

President Jacob Zuma’s announcement of a massive infrastructure programme announced during the State of the Nation Address provided an opportunity to the country to build new towns and cities that will not have townships but integrated and sustainable human settlements.

Sexwale said it did not make sense to recognize the Western Cape area of Franschhoek with 3000 houses as a town, whilst Cornubia in KwaZulu-Natal, with over 50 000 houses, was not.

The country’s massive infrastructure project was breaking new ground especially in the mineral belt of Limpopo where massive investments are to be seen in roads, railway, telecommunications and massive electrification programme.

“That is going to bring a new impetus to the economy and new cities are going to come up. The first one we identified is Lephalale. It’s a new city and it’s going to be a city without a township,” said Sexwale.

Turning to the UCT programme, he said it offered an important opportunity for the senior leadership teams in each city to grapple with the socio-economic challenges facing the country.

“One of the things I would like to urge, perhaps coming from this gathering is to join up in what we proposed as human settlements to the Treasury and the Auditor-General to provide courses in basic management for those who get elected at local level.

“Our leadership has to have basic skills in management, how projects come about and budgeting. It’s all about costs accounting. People have got to learn some basics and acquire skills on cost accounting, cost control, cost containment, cost reduction,” said Sexwale.