INLSA
140112:CITY MANAGER SIBUSISO SITHOLE
By 2030 there will no longer be slums in the eThekwini metro. That’s the ambitious target which city manager S’bu Sithole has set himself.
“If we move from a basis that it will never be eradicated, it is a defeatist attitude… It’s not like it can’t be eradicated; it is about when then this will be done,” Sithole said of his plan to provide decent housing for all in just 18 years, despite the hurdles faced by previous administrations to arrest the problem.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Mercury yesterday, Sithol, who has just finished 100 days in office, said the city’s housing development would be stepped up in the new financial year with the aim of constructing 20 000 to 25 000 units a year.
He said that by eradicating slums they would have satisfied the basic needs of the people. However, resources had to be used more efficiently, especially with the lack of land in the municipality.
“We need to go up in the sky… and maximise the potential of the land that exists,” said Sithole.
Already these plans of building upwards will be implemented at Cornubia, near Umhlanga, where some of the original designs will be changed.
In addition, Sithole hoped that Cornubia could be completed in 10 years and not the previously estimated 20 years.
While more houses would be built, the city wouldalso guard against the same businesses getting to do the work. Sithole said the housing development industry was a multibillion-rand one, and they wanted to empower more people to “play in that space”, so that they too could be developed.
In future, certain companies would no longer have a monopoly over contracts, and if they were involved in one phase of a project, they would not automatically get the job for the next phase. Sithole said it was no longer a case of “once you are in, you are then in in perpetuity”.
From now, more emphasis would be placed on construction sites, and more money would be placed in structures, rather than spent on developers who were coining it.
The days of certain families dominating when it came to the supply of materials for construction were also over, he added.
However, while eThekwini had an abundance of engineering and construction skills, it had a dearth of project management skills, which manifested in the poor quality of low-cost housing.
Exacerbating the problems was the “disjuncture between the different departments, which effectively means that housing is galloping on its own”.
To remedy this, the municipality would train people in its employ and employ more people when it needed to boost its project management capacity.
To this end, he suggested that brick-making co-operatives be formed to empower people who would then collaborate with the SA Bureau of Standards so that the products conformed to national standards.
But while development was the key, the municipal manager stressed that it was not just about building houses, but also about building communities. Communities which were largely still divided along racial lines in the metro had to be integrated in an attempt to eradicate apartheid-era geography. “We have not gone beyond narrow group issues. We need to see more intermarriages… when you see a black man with a white woman, people still stare.”
One way to bridge this gap was through cultural events. He said the city was open to suggestions, as it needed to have “flagship events” which everyone would be excited about. “Something like a Rio street parade where everyone wants to demonstrate the multicultural aspect of our city… but also the interracial aspect.
“Durban has been the best-managed city in SA… some say Cape Town… but they never had the same challenges we did. Most of the financial models used by other cities are ones which were developed by Durban,” he said. “I want to see us maintaining our status as the number one city in Africa.”
This included growing the “urban design” of the city by erecting buildings with new designs which took climate change into account. But, more importantly, Sithole wanted people to recognise Durban as a caring city. He said where exceptional circumstances existed, and where people were in dire need of housing, that must be prioritised. This would be in instances in which grandparents had to take care of children who were Aids orphans, or where there were very ill people in a family.
Currently there were clinics in the municipality which only operated during the day. The municipality was hoping to turn them into 24-hour operations, after talks with the unions.
Also on his wish list was to see the city’s night-time entertainment being brought back to life. He said social life in Durban was minimal and he wanted the CBD to come to life with live shows and perhaps the creation of cultural precincts.
Sithole said that, as the political head of the municipality was the mayor, the mayor was the face of the municipality. “Wherever we are marketed as a city, the mayor must become the central face.”
So far he enjoys a good relationship with all parties, but he points out that a good relationship does not always mean that the parties to the relationship agree on everything.
