August 10, 2007
By JoNews Reporter
IT has been little over a year since Mavela Dlamini became City Manager of the City of Johannesburg, and in that time he has had ample opportunity to assess the task of heading up the team that runs the most influential metro in the country.
In 2006 the City took the first steps in "mapping out the route to a better life in Joburg" by approving the Growth and Development Strategy, setting out its vision and goals for the foreseeable future.
Much is expected of Joburg because of its 121 years of commercial successes, Dlamini says. On a visit to Johannesburg earlier this year, President Thabo Mbeki said that for the country's economy to grow at the national goal of six percent, Johannesburg needed to grow at nine percent. "The City has started rallying the business sector to work with it towards achieving this target."
As the City Manager sees it, "Joburg is a premier role player in our country and no effort is spared in strengthening that role." It is, after all, South Africa's primary business city, a dynamic centre of production, innovation, trade, finance and services.
Key to this is:
- Making Joburg a competitive city and investment destination of choice;
- Supporting the business community through keeping the cost of doing business in the city low;
- Creating jobs, which has the knock on effect of improving personal lifestyles and facilities; and
- Ensuring that there is a range of housing and personal development opportunities.
"The amount of work undertaken in this period has laid a solid foundation for these attributes to be realised across Joburg," Dlamini says.
The City drew several guiding principles out of the moulding of the Growth and Development Strategy – the proactive absorption of the poor; emphasis on balanced and shared growth; facilitating social mobility; focusing on settlement restructuring; placing an emphasis on sustainability and the environment; and seeking innovative governance solutions.
These principles define everything the City plans or does. "All our Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and Business Plan scorecards seek to strengthen this development agenda."
All these plans are in keeping with turning Joburg into a world-class African city.
Dlamini is reluctant to compare Johannesburg to any other city. "Joburg is a special place with its own character and cannot be measured against some city out there."
The city is striving to enhance its unique identity. "We want to claim a place in history as an African city built on the values of an African experience and imperatives, informed by best practise from wherever they can be found and adapted to Joburg's situations."
The Growth and Development summit held in 2006 determined that Joburg would be "a city of opportunity, where the benefits of balanced economic growth will be shared in a way that enables all residents to gain access to the ladder of prosperity, and where the poor, vulnerable and excluded will be supported out of poverty".
This would lead to a very different city from the divided one of the past, the City Manager predicts. It will be "a more equitable and spatially-integrated city – a world-class African city for all, where everyone will be able to enjoy decent accommodation, excellent services, the highest standards of health and safety, access to participatory governance and quality community life in sustainable neighbourhoods and vibrant urban spaces".
To achieve just this vision, the City Manager identifies five primary focus areas:
- Economic development, where sectors of excellence will be encouraged, including broadening economic participation. The City will focus on supporting this through reducing the cost of doing business in Johannesburg, boosting public transport through the Bus Rapid Transit network and improving access to communication.
- Resource management, including improved systems of revenue collection and stringent oversight of the City's finances and personal performance.
- Development planning, with an improved turnaround on various planning and facilitation processes to enhance growth of the city.
- Inner city, which will see a focus on urban regeneration and management. One key aspect of this is effective by-law enforcement and policing. Other aspects will look at improving the environment and creating structured trading areas.
- Community development and service delivery, emphasising enhanced care for all social categories in the city, a focus on, among other things, waste removal and environmental management, tarring roads, and supporting the creation of housing.
Challenges
Dlamini believes that the development of the City should be seen as a marathon rather than a sprint, and as with all marathons "the running-bus effect is more helpful than a lonesome grind into the distance".
Developments need to be looked at holistically, rather than in isolation; the multitude of plans already in place guarantee that all the challenges faced by the City are always on the radar screen.
One example Dlamini draws on is the issue of housing. "If we talk of the obvious inadequate housing in the city, in the light of in-migration, the immense delivery we have achieved tends to be overshadowed, rightly or wrongly, by the ever-increasing influx of people seeking opportunities and shelter in Joburg."
He points to the thousands of houses built in new areas like Cosmo City, Lehae and Pennyville, as well as the upgrading of hostels. Despite this, he says, there tends to be a view from some quarters that the City is not doing anything about this. "This is obviously an errant and incorrect assertion because the results of our work are there for everyone to see."
For this reason, it is important for the City to build "a dimension of sharing and communicating" with all of its partners both inside the metro and beyond.
Regarding informal settlements, Dlamini says the City's approach is to formalise such areas "so that certainty can be given to residents". The formalisation of these settlements is coupled with providing basic services, most of which tend to fall into the category of the City's social safety net. "Every effort is being made to avail at least minimum services while the Master Housing Development Plan continues being rolled out."
While informal areas are generally not desirable environments in which to live, the City understands that they are necessitated by current pressures in the economy and by a desire to reverse the historical urban distortions.
"The efforts made by residents in these areas to build themselves good shelter is greatly appreciated as the marathon-bus on housing may, in some cases, take a while before it reaches their neighbourhoods."
Much of the City's efforts have been to balance the imbalances caused by past policies. He points out that areas such as Soweto "were truly neglected for over a hundred years while previous administrations focused on a small sector of the city".
Dlamini says he is proud "to serve in a government that is unashamedly pro-poor in its philosophy".
However, he emphasises that the City does not, in fact, neglect the more affluent areas but invests sufficient effort in ensuring the suburbs also enjoy the benefits of a growing city. "The focus of a shared growth, as espoused in the Growth and Development Strategy, engenders us to doing this for all the people of Johannesburg, while at the same time being mindful to strive for a level playing field environment.
"We will continue to upgrade the infrastructure, collect waste and cut grass just as we do in other areas of the City. We know only too well that 'you cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong!'"
Lessons learned
Crucial to the development of Joburg is the effort put into supporting the City's vision and plans. "A racehorse that consistently runs just a second faster than the other horse is worth millions of dollars more," is one of his catch phrases. For Dlamini it is important to be willing to put in that extra effort that separates the winner from second place.
Joburg is South Africa's primary business city - a dynamic centre of production, innovation, trade, finance and services
Involved in the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, Dlamini says that experience has helped Johannesburg realise the enormous advantages that can be gained by utilising the pressure of having an international spotlight on it. "It created an impetus for us to do things that ordinarily would have taken forever."
He makes mention of the upgrades of roads and links in Sandton, Rosebank and Randburg, adding that "may never have been done without the gusto and resolute determination brought about by the pressure of the summit".
The former head of the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) adds that without the intense focus of the summit, "the Moroka Dam project would never have come to life and the Soweto roads project could have been a distant dream".
The World Summit on Sustainable Development set a new level for managing City programmes. "As a direct outcome of the summit, there are numerous parks that have since been developed across the city. Greening projects and watercourse upgrades have all taken centre stage in our developmental agenda."
He is also justifiably proud of a significant project completed under his directorship while at the JRA – the tarring of the roads across Soweto.
What stands out is "the realisation of what society can do given the slightest opportunity to be shown respect and enhancing their dignity".
He began his career intent on instilling a sense of respectability in the engineering services in black townships. "When we built and completed the Old Potch and Roodepoort roads in Soweto, I thought at least we had contributed to a better quality of life but never did I anticipate the enormous turnaround in environmental pride that followed the completion of the tarring of gravel roads in Soweto. I was truly overwhelmed by the resultant cleanliness of the public environment and the private investment that flowed into the area."
Dlamini says that sometimes the easiest thing to do is everything. "In a municipal environment, however, the bigger challenge is in deciding what not to do." In this case it is finding the balance between tackling the challenges with limited resources.
Using the knowledge and skills earned hosting the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Joburg is "supremely confident that the 2010 Fifa Football World Cup™ will not only be a great success, but will also leave an indelible footprint on the landscape of the city".
But past success is no guarantee of future success. Here his philosophy becomes clear: "Even if you are on the right track, you cannot afford to just sit, you will be run over!"
Focus on finances
A counterpoint to the projects being rolled out by the City is the stringent control of the finances needed to fund such programmes.
Vital to Dlamini is the attaining of a clean audit. He says the City is working hard to ensure this outcome, adding "we are quite upbeat with the progress made".
Many departments that seemed to have been struggling with creating a culture of good management and resource management have surprised us by working hard to turn this around. "That attitude makes us believe that achieving a clean audit must be around the corner."
Explaining the turnaround with a practical example, Dlamini refers to a municipal estate in Bellavista where the City had lost track of who the tenants were, as well as what they were supposed to pay in rent. "Today we have an upper 80 percent payment level, with lease contracts in place, and those that are not paying are properly registered in the social safety net of the City."
In the spotlight
It is important to the City Manager that residents and others are aware of the City's achievements. "The City can remain an island if its programmes are not communicated and marketed to the rest of the country and the world."
The City celebrates the New Year
He is pleased at the public attention the City received for its New Year celebrations, which were broadcast across the continent. Also on television was the inaugural Joburg Open golf tournament.
On the financial front the City – for the first time in 11 years – received an upgrade in its audit report from a disclaimer to a qualified audit opinion. Furthermore, the City's credit rating from Fitchratings went from an A- to an A and then to an A+. The rating from CA Ratings was also upgraded from an A to an A+.
Also important to Dlamini is the improvements made in revenue collection, which ties in with Project Phakama, a City initiative to further increase revenue collection and align the strategic business processes of the city.
"Before Project Phakama was rolled out, we were able to put together the biggest municipal budget in this country: a whopping R21-billion [operating budget] and R4,8-million [capital budget]."
But complacency is out – "In Jozi, we use our past success as a trampoline, not as an easy chair." When Phakama is fully rolled out, huge benefits will be realised and lots of time will be freed up to managers to focus of other opportunities to raise the bar in Jozi to improve the quality of life for all".
Team effort
A civil engineer-turned metro manager, Dlamini believes his training stands him in good stead.
Operations research and transportation have given him the skills to think through challenges systematically and break these challenges into manageable chucks, sequencing them in a way that achieves optimum results.
"Obviously, the entire engineering curriculum of civil engineering addresses the day-to-day activities of communities; especially in an urban environment. It is possibly the oldest development syllabus that allowed most of civilization to unfold. So, running a municipality tends to call in the different skills of the profession to test just about all the things we do in the City. The one important lesson from all this is the idea that it cannot be done is a myth."
But he is clear that his job could not be done alone, and he has high praise for the team that supports him, or as he refers to it, "the mean machine that is driving Joburg".
"Successes are a reflection of the collective effort," he says, adding "The experience of being in the midst of the excellent team running Joburg is a great source of inspiration towards ensuring that all the targets and challenges we set ourselves are realised."
The future of Joburg
In the next decade, Dlamini envisages a more vibrant Jozi, driven by dynamic leaders, excelling in financial markets, co-operating side-by-side with structured yet less formal business activities.
This, he says, will emerge from the efforts undertaken today. "Mitirho ya vulavula, as they say in xiTshonga."
He points to the history of the inner city – which was deserted by business, with the subsequent degradation of buildings that were then turned into high-density accommodation with a concomitant fall in living standards and other social ills. Along with this many job opportunities were displaced or lost altogether.
Now, however, a successful CBD regeneration programme has been implemented in some city blocks. "We need to take this further, a few blocks at a time. We need to bring on board the owners of buildings and businesses."
Dlamini sums up his reflections, "The footprint of our work speaks for itself and can tell a better story than myself."
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