April 11, 2002
By Lucille Davie
THE Alexandra People's Centre opened this month amid much singing and clapping and happy smiles, in the courtyard of a new four-storey, red-brick building.
The Centre is a partnership between the City of Johannesburg, the Alexandra Renewal Project and the national Department of Housing. This is the third Centre to open. Region 9, Johannesburg south, and Region 11, Ennerdale and Orange Farm, opened last year. The intention is to open People's Centres in all 11 regions of Johannesburg in the next few months.
"Today marks another milestone in a grand initiative by government to restore the human dignity of the millions of our people who reside in Alexandra," said Gauteng MEC for Development Planning and Local Government, Trevor Fowler, at the opening.
The purpose of the People's Centres is to provide an information centre, a help and complaints desk, as well as a centre for the payment of local rates, electricity and water.
There will also be a Land Claims office, and a City Power office within the Centre, with hopes that the numerous power cuts in the township during winter can be sorted out quickly by City Power.
In view of the vastness of Alexandra, the main People's Centre has been established at the region 7 offices in Andries Close in nearby Wynberg, with a satellite centre in 8th Avenue in Alexandra.
It is hoped that the centres will not only be seen as places to handle complaints but also as "a mechanism of participation to bring suggestions about how governance could be improved", adds Fowler.
Furthermore, the aim is to "restore people's dignity" and "bring government closer to the people".
"We need to move to a point where communities themselves take charge of their lives by ensuring sustainability of services by paying for them."
The greater Johannesburg area is divided into 11 regions, and Alexandra is in region 7, together with the surrounding middle-class largely white suburbs of south Kensington, Cyrildene, Linksfield and Lyndhurst, amongst others.
Alexandra is home to some 400 000 people, and sections of it are tin shacks and squatter camps. The Alexandra Renewal Project is a R1.3-billion, seven-year upliftment project, announced by President Thabo Mbeki in February last year.
Fowler emphasised that the Alexandra Renewal Project would "leave a fundamental legacy of social advancement in Alexandra".
