Speech by Executive Mayor Sindisile Maclean at the Vuna Award celebrations dinner held at the Regent Hotel on 6th March 2004.

Acknowledgments

We gather here for dinner this evening with a sense of accomplishment.

We gather as proud local government development combatants and transformation agents of note, together with our national and provincial leadership to celebrate our Vuna victory.

You have watched the video. Vuna has been no easy victory. We did not claim easy victories, as Cde Vuyo Mosana would say, quoting the people he likes quoting. And we did not tell lies.

The video has contextualized the long, tortuous and seemingly never-ending road we are travelling to push back the frontiers of poverty while transforming and shaking off the last vestiges of our apartheid past.

It is not an easy task.

As a City which the UN classifies among the 435 in the world with a population of between 500 000 and a million, we too feel the effects of a unipolar global world in which there is no balance of power and the powerful walk mercilessly over the vulnerable and poor to achieve their political and economic objectives.

A world in which economies can be destroyed at the press of a button or the deployment of a 21st century fighting machine that has no match.

On the national front, we are celebrating an interesting moment in the evolution of our freedom. It is time when election fever is gripping our country and the very people who once defined our oppression now seek to define our freedom.

They want to tell us what to do and how to do it, to define the parameters in which must operate and to impose yardsticks which are not of our culture or tradition.

It is for this reason I believe we must send a powerful message back with our national leaders -- Cde Smuts, Gerti and Mphalwa etc — that we stand by our leaders and remain loyal and committed to the policies of the African National Congress.

We will do so with all the political energy at our command. As the hands and feet of governance and with our hands on the levers of power, we will deliver on the promises to free our people from economic oppression in the same way we followed our leaders to free our people from political oppression.

As a City, we stand confident of our ability to help unleash an era of economic prosperity and poverty alleviation through job creation that will and must make a difference.

We are committed to help expand the government's social safety net that has been made possible by our successful macroeconomic policies.

We are ready to participate in the Expanded Public Works Programme and to promote the concept of Community Development Workers that will enhance the interaction between government and the people and give muscle to the concept of people's power.

Our City has put all the developmental local government fundamentals in place and we are on the threshold of closing the gaps that will cut our unacceptable 35% unemployment rate as well as our unacceptably high indigent register by putting our people to work.

We stand ready with the private sector to harness the potential of the City through development strategies such as the:

• Industrial Development Zone which will come on stream next year with millions of rands of infrastructure having been invested to create hundreds of jobs;
• The Buffalo City Development Agency which is set to unleash the many pockets of high grade development potential around the City;
• The Bisho-King Integration Plan that promises to unleash major tourism potential;
• Inner City rejuvenation and the unfolding of the downtown University of Fort Hare educational development node;
• The West Bank Grand Prix area development concepts that can link the area to international development trends; and
• The Mdantsane Urban Renewal Programme which is set to change the face of this apartheid creation.

We have not forgotten our rural development policies to bring food security to the 20% of our population scattered in the underdeveloped 300 villages which have been incorporated into Buffalo City.

We have a City Revitalisation Plan in place that will fill the gaps and help take us to where we want to be.

The road ahead continues to wind and our development ambitions continue to seemingly be misaligned, causing tension with our financial realities.

Our financial fitness continues to be questioned as our arrear rates continue to peak above the R400 million mark and our capex continues to be but a fraction of what the City needs.

But we are determined. We have transformed and restructured out bureaucratic machine to align its output with our unquestionable and noble political programme.

We are enhancing the democratic inclusion of our communities in decision-making and building an overarching structure to link all our societal structures so that we all can embrace a single vision to take us where we all want to be and where we should be.

Truly, the struggle continues and Buffalo City will take the bull by the horns in the fight for justice, peace and prosperity for all.

The Vuna Award has basically marked the halfway mark of our achievements. There is a long and winding road ahead which we will negotiate with the same dedication and commitment of the past. And we will win.

Sindisile Maclean
EXECUTIVE MAYOR

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