Upper Mgqesha, Madakeni, Zabalaza, Nomgwadla, Dikidikana, Mzintshane, Mbombo, Nakani, Nkosiyane, Pirie Mission, New Rest, Mamata, Gambushe, Mantlaneni, Handasi, Mzantsi, Lenge, Bulembu, Pirie Trust

Ward Councillors:

Sithembiso Tyilo Zelpha Jantjies

(acknowledgments)

I greet you most heartily this morning, comrades, and thank you for finding the time to come and share notes with me on the life and welfare of Buffalo City in general, and your areas in particular.

I also wish to greet Councillor Sithembiso Tyilo and Councillor Zelpha Jantjies, who are your Ward Councillors for the two Wards gathered here today, namely Ward 35 and Ward 37.

I also greet members of the Ward Committees for these Wards, and wish to take this opportunity to introduce them to you.

For Ward 35 they are:

The Ward Committee members for Ward 37 are:

I am aware that the rate of development in our rural areas is not as significant as we all would like it to be. The reasons for this are to be found in the skewed development policies of the past regime, policies that were characterized by lack of respect for the welfare and dignity of poor people.

The apartheid government regarded rural areas as traditional holding settlements for the masses of Black people in this country. This attitude was amply demonstrated in the notorious homelands system, where so-called development was nothing more than a concerted effort to ensure that people living in communal villages did not graduate beyond the status of subsistence farmers and migrant labourers. No provision was ever made to even try and create jobs for the rural labour market.

Separate development saw nothing wrong with people sharing their drinking water with cattle and other animals. Roads were not a priority. Clinics were few and sparsely placed, with each clinic serving communities living within a radius of up to fifteen kilometers.

That, comrades is the situation that we inherited in the year 2000 when the present dispensation of developmental local government came into effect. And to this day we are still grappling with the challenge of turning around the situation and ensuring that you, the people in living in our rural areas, enjoy the same quality of life as your urban counterparts.

As Buffalo City, we are constantly engaged in a variety of processes aimed at becoming more responsive to the needs of our communities, and we adopt the view that we must use all the tools at our disposal to understand better what the masses are saying and thinking. This becomes even more important in reaching the majority in our communities who are poor. The proper functioning of our newly-elected Ward Committees will therefore be critical to a healthy local participatory democracy.

It is in this spirit, and building on the solid foundation created by my predecessor, Sindisile Maclean, the first Executive Mayor of Buffalo City, that I and my Mayoral Committee felt it absolutely necessary to engage the people of Buffalo City directly in these Imbizos. [In paying tribute to Comrade Maclean for his sterling contribution, I want also on a personal note to extend our heartfelt sympathies to him and his family for the loss of his mother this past week.]

I have always believed that our communities collectively constitute the Municipality's most significant and influential partner in the administration and management of the affairs of our people, and in driving Buffalo City's developmental agenda. Your presence here today shows that you also share and support this principle, and are ready to play your own role in the ongoing reconstruction of our communities. This is a welcome show of commitment on the part of each and every one here, and we salute you.

Our principal mandate as your Municipality is to deliver on community needs and aspirations as articulated by the affected communities themselves. It was with this mandate in mind, when I took office as Executive Mayor in March this year, that I made a solemn pledge to accelerate the rate of development and service delivery.

I would like to believe that we have already taken decisive steps towards making this pledge a reality. During the 18 Imbizos to be held over the next fortnight in our various settlements throughout the municipality, we will be sharing what we have done, as well as many of the positive developments that communities can expect in the next six to eighteen months, that promise in different ways to add substance to our commitment to create a better life for all our people.

Comrades, to embark on a journey, it is vital to know your desired destination. Allow me to reiterate our commitment to the vision towards which Buffalo City has been striving for the past five years: we want a Buffalo City that is “a people-centred place of opportunity where the basic needs of all are met in a safe, healthy and sustainable environment.”

This is a noble political goal on which we will not compromise, and that we do not want to believe is unachievable, even in our generation. But how do we translate it in practical ways into the better life that we long for?

Being people-centred, we believe, means that the highest values of ubuntu should be aimed for both within our municipal administration as well as in the way in which the organization services its clients. It implies also the rediscovery of a communal culture characterized by the values of respect, humility, generosity of spirit and mutual support.

It leaves no place for the abuse of women and children in our communities, and it reminds us that we can never turn our backs on the poor and the vulnerable.

For Buffalo City to be a place of opportunity to us means to be a place where all citizens must be free to develop to their full potential, a place into which investors will be keen to plough their money and achieve good returns, a place where those who wish to work don't have to beg, steal or scavenge for bread on the city's refuse dumps.

To prioritise basic needs of people means that we in local government, hand in hand with our colleagues and comrades in the provincial and national spheres, must develop a culture where the social welfare of all, but necessarily and most urgently the poorer and less mobile, is addressed as decisively as possible over as short a time as possible.

Throughout our consultation processes, all communities have repeatedly identified crime and insecurity as one of the most critical of all issues to be addressed. We know that safety will continue to be elusive while people remain desperate, and that none of us can be secure if any one of us is hungry, homeless or hopeless.

In the past financial year we were faced with two major challenges. The first challenge was the fact that we do not have the delegated authority to implement some of the infrastructural and human development programmes that we want to put in place for you. Programmes like agriculture and the provision of health services in rural areas remain the prerogative of the Provincial Government.

The upgrading and maintenance of roads is the shared responsibility of the Provincial Government and the District Council.

Electricity supply to rural areas is a delegated function of Eskom, whilst the provision of reticulated water still remains with the Amatola Water Board.

The second challenge that we faced was the immediate availability of funds. I echoed this frustration repeatedly during my speech in Mdantsane on Saturday when we were launching these imbizos, and I explained that the Municipality is constantly searching for and implementing innovative ways to grow our revenue base and to improve our financial management systems in a bid to cope with development and service delivery backlogs.

Nevertheless, the Municipality has managed to respond directly to the most basic need of all, namely the provision of clean, healthy water.

ENDS.

Zintle Peter
EXECUTIVE MAYOR
1st November 2006.