Tale of two cities? Cape Town is SA’s one city doing the most for the poor

It is difficult to pick a place to begin unpacking the sheer scale of misinformation in Faiez Jacobs’ piece about the City of Cape Town’s budgeting priorities.

But here is one central point that effectively ends the debate on which city does the most for the poor: Cape Town has an SA-record infrastructure budget of R40bn over three years, a full 75% of which directly benefits lower income households.

Just the 75% pro-poor portion of Cape Town’s record budget exceeds the entire capital budget of any other city by some distance. The conclusion is therefore undeniable: no city invests more in pro-poor infrastructure than Cape Town.

Over the term of office to date, Cape Town has outspent Joburg and Tshwane combined on infrastructure (R25.8bn vs R22.8bn), and is even on track to outspend all three Gauteng metros combined by the end of 2025/26. 

A huge chunk of this spending (around 40%) goes to upgrading water and sanitation infrastructure, largely in lower-income communities, where the City is bringing down sewer spills and water pipe bursts by replacing 100km of sewer and 50km of water pipes metro-wide per year, a R2bn project.

Several major bulk sewer upgrades are also underway, including the Cape Flats sewer upgrade - SA’s largest bulk sewer project - benefitting over 300,000 households. 

Major Wastewater works upgrades are further benefitting residents of all income levels across the city, including the recently completed R4bn Zandvliet plant upgrade, which serves the whole of Khayelitsha and beyond.

Jacobs mentioned a budget for the Camps Bay pump station upgrade, but forgets to mention the station upgrades in Langa, Mamre, Fisantekraal, Philippi, Phoenix, Raapenberg, and many more lower-income communities. He opines about Masiphumelele, and Gugulethu, but doesn’t mention the various upgrades and six major sewer pipe replacement projects completed there in recent years.

Affordable housing

Jacobs’ misinformation reaches a comical height with his claim that the City’s budget “allocates R0 to well-located inner city social housing”. 

Firstly, social housing projects are funded by national subsidies, so the City’s budget is the wrong place to look.

As is well known, social housing is funded by a combination of subsidies via the national Social Housing Regulatory Authority (SHRA), private sector investment by social housing developers (SHIs), and by the various incentives under the City’s Accelerated Land Release for Affordable Housing Mayoral Priority Programme, including discounted release of well-located municipal land and bulk service provision.

Cape Town is a national leader in affordable housing delivery, with more land released in the last two years than in the decade prior, and a pipeline of 12,000 well-located affordable housing units close to the CBD and other important parts of the metro. 

Cape Town is also home to several pioneering affordable housing initiatives, including:

• We've published Land Discount Guidelines allowing City-owned land to be heavily discounted to maximise the viable social housing unit yield - a national first.
• Utility Discounts for Social Housing: We're offering significant discounts on water, electricity, and property rates for these developments, another first.
• Municipal Planning By-Law Amendments to enable micro-developers to deliver affordable housing at a far faster rate in townships, informal, and lower-income suburbs.
• Further support for Micro-Developers includes pre-approved building plans and development charge discounts to encourage the safe and compliant construction of small-scale rental units.

Energy and Urban Mobility

Jacobs says that only a small portion of the City’s Energy capital budget goes to informal settlement electrification – he’s right, it’s because of existing high levels of electricity access for residents in Cape Town informal settlements.

What Cape Town does do - more than any other government - is invest in reliable electricity access for all, with over R4bn in upgrades to the City’s electricity grid over the next three years. 

Jacobs also attempts to criticise energy security investments such as the Steenbras hydro plant and Atlantis solar plant. This makes no sense as Cape Town invests in load-shedding protection for all residents, especially lower-income households who can’t afford alternative energy solutions.

Similarly nonsensical, is the claim that the City’s roads and mobility investments don’t benefit minibus taxi users, or that working class people don’t benefit from MyCiTi bus services, which anyone familiar with Cape Town will know is untrue.

Cape Town is in fact rolling out SA’s biggest public transport project by any City: the new MyCiTi Bus route linking Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain and various other communities to Wynberg/Claremont, a R10bn multi-year project. This will complement the existing MyCiTi N2 express route from these communities to the CBD, and other routes serving residents of all income levels, from Atlantis to Du Noon.

This is alongside road upgrades, repairs and congestion relief to the tune of R3,5bn, benefitting commuters of all stripes in our city. It is unclear how minibus users do not benefit from roads upgrading as Jacobs strangely claimed, not to mention the ongoing Public Transport Interchange upgrades amounting to R397m over the next three years, or the street-light upgrading and repairs topping over R1bn.

Safer Cape Town

No detail is provided, but Jacobs oddly claims that “Cape Town’s safety budget tops R7 billion, but it does not protect the poor”. 

This R7bn is indeed a record safety investment, part of which is:

• putting 700 new boots on the ground, including dedicated neighbourhood policing in every ward, 
• beefing-up enforcement along the N2 used by millions of lower-income Capetonians, 
• and adding more protection escorts for our frontline teams servicing the city’s most vulnerable communities and informal settlements

This latest investment builds on the successful LEAP initiative to grow policing resources in Cape Town’s most vulnerable communities together with the Western Cape Government. The City is also driving a major safety technology rollout across its policing services, including dashcams, bodycams, CCTV, gunshot detection, and licence plate recognition, amongst others.

We can do even more to help SAPS fight crime once the necessary criminal investigative powers are devolved for officers to build prosecution-ready case dockets for gang, gun, and drug crime. 

Cape Town’s pro-poor budget

Finally, it’s important to address the false claim that tariff reforms are adding ‘R300 in fixed water and sanitation charges to many township households’. 

This is the stuff of fantasy, as no home under R4m pays that amount in fixed charges. 

Far from it for lower-income households, as getting rid of the former ‘pipe levy’ based on pipe size, and basing it now on property value, means that all homes under R2,5m will pay less for their fixed water charges than they would have on the pipe-size system for 25/26. 

Overall, Cape Town has the best social assistance package of all metros, including:

• SA’s best deal for pensioners: rates discounts and lifeline electricity up to R27 000 monthly income, regardless of property value
• SA’s highest monthly free water allocation (15KL), helping especially larger households;
• SA’s widest qualifying criteria for a 100% rates discount (R450 000 property value, <R7 500 monthly income)
• ‘First R450 000 rates-free’ benefit for all homes up to R7m, highest benefit of its kind

In conclusion, Jacobs complains that clean audits don’t matter, but these are the reason that, in a single year, Cape Town is able to table an SA-record pro-poor infrastructure budget; major expansions to policing and cleaning operations; the most inclusive indigent and pensioner support package of all metro’s; and still maintain the lowest monthly bills for ratepayers compared to other cities.

And so, we have to conclude that Jacobs, after all this time as an ANC politician in Cape Town, still doesn’t listen to his own party President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is exhorting people like him to look at Cape Town and learn, because the evidence is undeniable that DA-run municipalities are getting things done, especially for the poor.

* Geordin Hill-Lewis is Mayor of Cape Town.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.