Tonight, we are here to thank the residents of Joburg for opening up their homes, welcoming us into their communities, engaging with us on the streets, in community halls, at their places of work, for the many church invitations, and coming over to us at restaurants to have conversations with us. 

Our offer to the residents of Joburg is to achieve a Safe, Clean and Prosperous Joburg.

Our people-to-people campaign has been a resounding success since we launched our campaign on 23 May 2026. Even during the ice-cold winter, people made time to talk to us. Even now, with the scorching heat, people are still coming out of their homes to be in conversation with us.

We have listened carefully and with great intention to the residents of Joburg. We have heard community members as well as residents’ associations. We have listened to taxi associations. We have considered and committed to the demands made under the umbrella body called the Joburg Crisis Alliance. At the heart of their demands is a need for meaningful public participation in the governance of our city. They demand that leaders be capable, caring, honest and ethical in their conduct. These are all values we do not struggle to adhere to at RISE Mzansi. 

The business community also came out strongly, indicating that it will need a dependable partner after the 4 November 2024 election. We wrote to business that we will be a dependable partner in service of all residents of Joburg. We affirmed that any relationship between the City and business shall be governed by transparency and accountability. We will not privatise service delivery. We will build a strong framework that governs how the city, business and civil society collaborate for the benefit of the residents of Joburg. 

We responded to an invitation by the United Ulama Council of South Africa and participated in robust discussions at the Muslim Civic Consensus Indaba. We appreciated this strategic intervention that was an outcome of rigorous research within the Muslim community, throughout South Africa. 

Our engagements across the various sectors and sections of our City reveal seamless consensus: the people of Joburg deserve clean and affordable water that flows in their taps and not on the streets. Everyone is crying out for resilient infrastructure so that service delivery is guaranteed in all communities. 

We must stop subjecting residents of Joburg to electricity disruptions.

We must stop the water tank mafias who at times sabotage water infrastructure.

We must stop the exploitation of contract workers at Pikitup, affecting waste collection.

We must stop making excuses for potholes and bad roads.

We must stop making it normal for streetlights not to work. 

We must stop making the residents of Joburg not to feel safe.

RISE Mzansi is here to STOP AMASELA. They must start packing up. Corruption stops with us in Joburg.

People want a stable government

For this to be possible, we need a stable coalition government in the City of Joburg. In the past ten years, political parties have chopped and changed coalition arrangements without being accountable to the residents of this city. 

As RISE Mzansi we commit to the following principles for coalition building:

We will develop a coalition agreement that all parties should sign and publish it for the residents of Joburg. Such agreement should outline the minimum programme of action, the values that bring parties together, areas of disagreement and how the coalition will be managed.

We will not enter a coalition with political parties that flirt with criminality.

The quality of individual leaders being proposed to take up positions in the Mayoral Committee must be subject to vetting to ensure that they are fit for purpose. 

All political parties in the coalition must declare a zero-tolerance stance towards corruption.

People want an end to criminality in the city

If we are to turnaround Joburg, there is an urgent need to get rid of criminals within the administration of the city. We need to conduct urgent lifestyle audits on most of the senior management positions. We need to protect whistleblowers so that there can be a clear pipeline for those who want to report colleagues who are implicated in criminal conduct within the city. 

The hijacked buildings are a product of criminality that is embedded in the city administration and within some echelons of Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD). The drug syndicates are thriving, even in city owned properties such as taxi ranks. We will put a stop to this through multidisciplinary efforts that involve coordinated intelligence work in partnership with SAPS and the State Security Agency (SSA). 

We need a significant culture shift at JMPD, away from just doing roadblocks and more on enforcing by-laws and ensuring the residents of Joburg are safe. JMPD needs proper resourcing, including getting the basics right such as having properly functioning radio communication. There is a need for more personnel, modernised policing through body cameras, dashboard cams and integrated technology systems to provide greater scanning of Joburg streets. JMPD must have enough a budget to have fuel, move some of its fleet to cleaner energy, have other modes of transport purchased to cover the city. 

Procurement must be more transparent

A good friend of criminality is corruption. We need a more transparent procurement framework in the City of Joburg. This includes tightening policies that govern how bid evaluation and bid adjudication committees are appointed. We also need to record the deliberations of those committees so that when a successful bidder is announced, those recordings are also published. 

In due course, technology must be deployed in the procurement space to minimise the time it takes to bid for projects, to identify early those who over inflate prices and ensure more transparency in how we use the city’s money. 

Service delivery is not negotiable

People are tired of paying for services they do not receive. In some communities, people stopped paying. RISE Mzansi will ensure reliability of services by fixing root cause problems than treating the symptoms.

For this reason, we will endeavour to collapse the service rendering entities into the mainstream city administration. These include Johannesburg Water, Pikitup, Joburg Roads Agency, City Power, and JHB Development Agency. This will not happen overnight, but our intention is clear, service delivery must be fully accounted for by the city to improve coordination and accountability. 

Residents, from Alex to Melville are tired of JHB Water digging up holes in their communities and passing the rehabilitation responsibility to Johannesburg Roads Agency. This nightmare must stop.

Spatial reform is no longer negotiable

The residents of Joburg want a fully functioning public transport system that is inclusive of people who want to cycle their way around the city. This is not a call by the elites as some political parties will have you believe. People are cycling from Ivory Park to Woodmead under dangerous conditions given that there are no bicycle lanes to accommodate them. 

There is also a need to reduce the number of cars on our roads in Joburg so that the city is walkable. I have spent some time with Young Urbanists who are radically enthusiastic on ideas to build a more people-centred city. We have heard that some tram lines still exist on some of the roads across Joburg. Mixed public transport that leads to better air quality must be explored. In this journey, we will not leave taxis behind. Most associations are calling for meaningful consultation when it comes to transportation strategies to avoid conflict. 

Public Housing must be championed as a way of creating greater inclusion of people in our city. We will review bylaws and where they exist enforce them on newer developments. When an area is developed, the city and developers must consider the accommodation needs of working-class people who will serve the new development. These must be accompanied by greater public services such as parks, clinics, swimming pools, etc. This is what people-centred development will look like under RISE Mzansi. 

The city must be a place of prosperity

If we get the above correct, people will begin to find Joburg to be a place of opportunities once more. A safer and cleaner Joburg will unlock people’s creativity and that must be embraced within a clear framework for the Creative Economy. 

This economy is not just about artists, musicians, and filmmakers. It is about the entire value chain that needs harnessing by keeping the cost of doing business as minimal as possible. Joburg must take advantage of a growing generation of residents who are into arts, lifestyle, music and outdoor living. But this requires more venues, investment in public spaces and the people of Joburg. 

The green economy is another avenue for investment. At RISE Mzansi we believe that waste is wealth. We will ensure the City of Joburg drives greater investment into the value and supply chains of the waste economy. 

There must be no preference between those who are in the formal economy and those who are in the informal economy. We must promote and harness participation in both. We must continue to root out criminality in the informal economy space by ensuring that only those who are meant to occupy trading stalls do. We must fight extortion in that sector. We must remove the trading of drugs near the informal economy. We must make it easier to obtain and renew permits. 

A groundbreaking innovative idea

RISE Mzansi will after this launch publish a discussion document on an idea that no political party has been able to conceptualise. We need money to get the City of Joburg going. But we cannot borrow our way out of the problem. For this reason, I briefed a team on the idea of an Infrastructure Investment Fund. This fund we are currently calling it the Johannesburg Urban Infrastructure Capital Platform. 

It is designed to attract mega investments into Joburg’s public infrastructure so that we catch up at a faster pace than before on the R220-billion infrastructure backlog. This is not a move to privatise our city assets. It is a move to mobilise capital and ensure greater cost-efficiency at project management and value unlocking for long-term sustainability of our infrastructure. 

This fund will invite Joburg residents to be investors as well. Our ownership structure of the fund is proposed to be 49% by the City, 40% by private equity and 11% by residents. We will ensure that all residents have a possibility to participate while ensuring that the wealthy residents do not oversubscribe in a manner that concentrates residents’ ownership to a few hands. There is no money problem, just a trust deficit. That stops with RISE Mzansi.

A charge for the final push

Comrades, tonight does not mark the end of our people-to-people campaign. We might be tired, but we cannot afford rest. This is the most critical part of the campaign. Many people remain undecided who they will vote for. Many of them do not believe that there is an alternative to the African National Congress (ANC) they have voted for all their lives. Please go and tell them the good news; RISE Mzansi is an alternative home for progressives who are peace loving, who want to realise social justice in one generation. RISE Mzansi is the perfect home for those who believe in politics of solidarity at home and abroad, even during municipal elections. 

Asihambe siyosebenza ngokuzikhandla, sophumula kancane emva kwe 4 November 2026 before we go and take our rightful place in the City Council and usher in new leaders who are capable, visionary and ethical. 

Amasela Out!!