Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen,

For the last 10 months I have had the privilege of being the Executive Mayor in the City of Tshwane.

It has undoubtedly been one of the greatest honours of my life to have served my country as the leader of our capital city.

I became the Executive Mayor at the beginning of November 2020 after the city had been plunged into eight months of chaos by the ANC provincial government.

This came after they unlawfully dissolved our Municipal Council and imposed unelected administrators to run the capital.

In doing so they effectively collapsed service delivery and drove the city to the brink of financial ruin.

Since assuming office my commitment to our residents was very simple, that I would restore basic service delivery and stabilize the finances of the municipality.

This is exactly where I have placed by focus during the last 10 months as we have sought to restore proper governance to the City of Tshwane.

We have done this with a minority government which has brought with it, its own challenges that we have had to overcome.

What it is has shown us, is that we can do so much more with a proper majority so that we can govern the city outright and fully implement the policy positions of the Democratic Alliance to take the city forward.

I am immensely humbled by the DA’s decision to select me to contest the position of mayoral candidate for the City of Tshwane.

I intend to fully embrace this opportunity as it would be an honour to carry on serving the residents of Tshwane as their Executive Mayor.

I would like to thank all those that have supported me thus far in this journey, particularly my Mayoral Committee, my colleagues in the Tshwane caucus, the DA leadership, activists and supporters and all the residents of Tshwane for the faith you have shown in me.