De Lille hits back at critics

Cape Town-150127-Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille addresses the media at the launch of the City's Data portal. Picture Jeffrey Abrahams

Cape Town-150127-Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille addresses the media at the launch of the City's Data portal. Picture Jeffrey Abrahams

Published May 29, 2015

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Cape Town - Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille on Friday hit back at critics from civil society movement, the Social Justice Coalition (SJC), saying they continued to make false claims about the City’s budget allocation to informal settlements.

“I can understand a mistake made once. But I cannot understand mistakes made again and again after being corrected,” said De Lille, “Indeed, we have repeatedly corrected the false claims by the SJC but they have persisted in their supposed ignorance.”

During her budget speech for the 2015/2016 financial year, De Lille focused attention on the SJC from whom she said she had received “numerous memorandums”.

“They have spent some time constantly bringing up the same points again and again that the City was allegedly spending only R20 million on informal settlements,” said De Lille.

“The proposed operational expenditure on services to informal settlements amounts to R481,7 million in the upcoming financial year,” she said, “This is a huge amount by any account and is in addition to the [capital expenditure].”

De Lille suggested the SJC “puppet masters step back from their MacBooks for a second and answer a few questions themselves”.

“Why do they want the City to build in floodplains - don’t they care about people drowning? Why do they want the City to build under power lines - don’t they care about people getting electrocuted? Why do they want us to add to dangerous levels of density - don’t they care about the spread of disease and increased risk of dying? Why do they want us to build in railway buffers - don’t they care about people being run over by trains?,” asked De Lille.

“These are questions that the SJC, and their fellow uninformed travellers like the apparently well-meaning but hopelessly clueless commentator Judith February, will need to ask themselves.”

Axolile Notywala from the SJC responded to De Lille and said the movement found the mayor’s comments disappointing.

“We were there and those comments were directed right at us. The mayor blatantly attacked the organisation” said Notywala.

“These are not the kinds of comments you would expect from a mayor. It’s very sad and disappointing.”

Notywala explained that the SJC did not expect the City to tackle every issue in its informal settlements overnight. He added that the budget was a complex document that required assistance to decipher.

“But we want to know that they are developing proper plans,” he said.

“It is very disappointing that the mayor chose not to engage with the members of the organisation and the figures and instead chose to attack us,” said Notywala.

ANA

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