iGoli 2002 Citichat 13 August 1999

Citichat 26/99 - 13 August 1999

iGoli 2002

Today is iGoli 2002 Summit Day when about 300 people from Local and Provincial Government, Labour, Community and Business have come together for the whole day to debate the strategy that has emerged from the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council’s Lekgotla Committee and to set up a Forum for developing a plan from iGoli 2002 to iGoli 2010.

At the moment it is lunchtime so I’ve taken the opportunity to shoot back to the office and do this week’s Citichat. This morning, under the Chair of Trevor Fowler, the new Gauteng MEC for Local Government we had addresses from the new Gauteng Premier, Mbazima Shilowa: the new Minister of Provincial and Local Government, Sydney Mufamadi and a review of the iGoli 2002 Plan by Kenny Fihla who is the Chairperson of the Transformation Lekgotla.

Nothing startling at this stage but the Plenary starts after lunch and hopefully we will have some positive input. One of the problems one has to break through at this sage is the attitude of “Oh no, not another Forum!” but I think the team who’ve put this together, Kenny Fihla, Ketso Gordhan, Pascal Moloi and others have done a good job and all the sectors need to get strongly behind their efforts. IGoli 2002 and 2010 relate of course to the Metropolitan area of Greater Johannesburg and not my more familiar territory of the Centre City but it is critically important that we have an holistic approach. Just some frighteningly telling statistics put out by Kenny Fihla to provide the backdrop and next week I will try to summarise the balance of the session.

*the GJMC has a total population of 3.8 million.

*as opposed to Cape Town’s growth rate of 3.4%, ours is only 1.8%.

*the labour resource is 848 900 of which only 457 700 are formally employed, i.e. 31.8% are unemployed

*there are 670 000 formal housing units BUT

*93 000 shacks (not including informal shacks in gardens, etc)

*there are 70 buildings that have been identified as ‘bad’ (that’s a City figure rather than Metropolitan)

*There are 4 000 living units that are overcrowded

*in the Northern ( previously ‘white’ ) areas 30% have post matriculation qualifications whilst

*In the disadvantaged areas to the South the education levels reflect only 20% with grade 4 (Standard 2) and 24% with only primary school level.

*in fringe settlements such as Doornkop there is 1 school for 29 200 children

*although Johannesburg represents only 30% of Gauteng’s population, it is ‘home’ to 50% of all hijackings in the Province, 33% of all rapes and 37% of all property related crimes.

* 23% of households have no on-site taps

* 30% of households have no waterborne sewerage

*40% of all water used is unaccounted for

*the electricity infrastructure has a backlog of 244 700 consumers

*the road backlog includes 1000 kms of unpaved roads

* the GJMC is R2.1 billion in arrears payments and has a R2.8 billion debt where the interest is R700 million alone.

Horrifying picture isn’t it? So, next time you’re cursing the Council at a traffic light that isn’t working. spare some sympathy for those that are trying to address these issues and some compassion for those who live in such dire poverty.

Regards