Our input on Cape Town’s plan snubbed: ANC

120530. Cape Town. ANC Chief Whip Xolani Sotashe unhappy the way the DA runs the City of Cape Town. Picture Henk Kruger

120530. Cape Town. ANC Chief Whip Xolani Sotashe unhappy the way the DA runs the City of Cape Town. Picture Henk Kruger

Published May 31, 2012

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The ANC in Cape Town says almost all its submissions for the city’s five-year plan were ignored, in a process the city has billed as its “most extensive public participation” yet.

This week the city approved its Integrated Development Plan (IDP), which will guide how the budget will be spent.

City mayor Patricia de Lille said more than one million people had been consulted.

However, the ANC said all the submissions made by the subcouncils it runs, including individual submissions, were not considered. The ANC runs five of the 24 subcouncils.

The party’s submissions include making it easier for companies to set up shop in Cape Town and slashing rates for senior citizens.

The ANC is challenging De Lille and the leadership of the DA-run administration to a public debate.

At a press briefing on Wednesday, Xolani Sotashe, ANC chief whip in council, with the subcouncil chairpersons, released the party’s input to the IDP.

Jeremiah Thuysnma, the chairman of subcouncil 9, which includes Khayelitsha, outlined some of the party’s proposals.

He said more than 70 percent of Mitchells Plain residents had voted for the DA during that election. Yet, he said, less than 0.2 percent of the capital budget was allocated to projects in the area in the next financial year.

He said the ANC’s “alternative IDP” was based on the needs of the poor and growing investment in the city.

“The majority of their (DA) voters are in the coloured communities, they are poor. Yet they are increasing the rates, the electricity, forcing more people onto that indigent list.”

Thuysnma said there were several barriers for setting up businesses.

“Business people can’t wait for two years for building plans to be approved. These are businesses that can create jobs and we are losing investment.”

One of the biggest projects it suggested was looking into building another airport in Atlantis to position Cape Town as the “gateway to Africa”.

Sotashe said the ANC was calling for a public debate with the DA-led administration on its submissions.

Solly Malatsi, De Lille’s spokesman, said the IDP process was the most “extensive public participation” process yet.

He said all input had been considered and that ‘‘the ANC must realise that to implement all its policies, it needs to win an election; it is not the government’’.

Cape Argus

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