Johannesburg - When Joburg mayor Parks Tau took office in 2011 he made a point of setting a tone for indelible effect on South Africa’s largest metropolis.
And next week as his first term draws to a close, Tau will stride out of his Braamfontein office and abandon the blue light to work in Sandton for the rest of the month, leading from the front, one of his government’s bold initiatives – the eco-mobility festival from the front.
For Tau, the success of the eco-mobility festival next month will be a statement of intent that will reverberate globally and possibly sway financial spin-offs in Joburg’s direction.
In December, the mayor will lead his team to the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris with a bowl of “demonstrable projects to ask the world to fund us”.
“We don’t want to go there with a begging bowl and say, look at us, we are begging for money,” he said. “We want to say to the world: ‘We can show you demonstrable projects and you have a duty to fund this.’”
On Thursday, the mayor and his staff will relocate to Sandton. “We’ve found space for us to work from so that we don’t talk about this (eco-mobility) at a distance,” said Tau.
“When we access Sandton we (won’t) be coming in our cars. We (will) be (using) an alternative transport system so that we are able to lead from the front.”
Tau’s dogged effort to make Joburg a sustainable city by reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and protecting its 5 million residents from the perils of climate change may be one his tenure’s legacies.
His push for alternatives continued quietly when he was introduced to cycling about 18 months ago before the city hosted the C40 conference – a pivotal gathering of the world’s megacities to discuss climate change.
“I think one of the things you realise when you cycle is just how many cyclists there are in Joburg,” he said. “I have been an avid cyclist for about one-and-half years.
“Since then I have been excited about cycling… its contribution to mobility, to reducing greenhouse gases.”
For four years, Tau’s administration has been championing green projects ranging from corridors of freedom to alternative energy interventions on smart-city initiatives and eco-mobility.
But even with these projects behind him, the mayor is modest about the legacy he will leave behind. “For us the most important legacy to leave is an institution which is capable of addressing the socio-economic challenges of our people, embrace innovation and the ability to tread in areas that people might not be comfortable to venture into,” he said.
“I don’t look at any of the programmes we are implementing and say: ‘I want the Parks Tau tag attached to it.’”
The City of Joburg is a high emitter of greenhouse gases per capita and the highest on the African continent, according to Tau.
Two of the city’s greatest contributors are buildings, particularly commercial, and cars.
In Sandton, the jewel of the city, the mayor said, a study of traffic and the number of buildings coming up, showed “we have to invest extensively so you’re able to address the problem”.
“Part of the problem that happened with the inner city, which had to do with parking regulations, was that people found the need to move out of the CBD because the area was becoming inaccessible,” he said.
“We certainly don’t want Sandton to go there. We think it is (an) asset that needs protecting through infrastructure but also investing in the alternatives for people.”
At times, Tau said, he was asked why he was building cycle lanes when some were not being utilised adequately and his response was: “The chicken and egg, which comes first?
“I am a cyclist and I know a number of people who are on the road at 5am who would be more than happy to use their bicycles to work if they had the appropriate alternatives,” he said.
“Do we sit and wait until we have a mass of cyclists, which we do, or do we say let me provide the infrastructure to support this movement?”
Tau has committed his administration to ensuring it leaves a lasting legacy of infrastructure and transport alternatives which are more functional than currently.
“If Sandton is our jewel, we don’t want (frustrated) people sitting in traffic for three hours in order to get in and out of it,” he said.
“We are not just looking at it as a month programme, we are there for the long haul.”
And looking down on the city sprawl daily from his office in Braamfontein, the mayor is troubled by the socio-economic challenges, the structural problems, which deny people access to opportunities in a urban system.
“The spatial structure of our city is such that people are unable to access it, if you’re poor and located in Poortjie, you have to travel 50km on a minibus taxi… your only mode of transport to access the nearest CBD,” he explained.
“Poverty is entrenched by the spatial structure of the city, lack of access to a network of opportunity and lack of opportunity to adequate public transport.
“A lot of these elements are about how we change the functioning of our city structurally, its ability to provide adequate mobility and its ability to create opportunities for young people. And that’s what we are trying to find solutions for, so we are able to change the structure and overcome the problems. A better functional urban system creates better opportunity for prosperity,” Tau added. Dear Saturday Star readers
Every second week Joburg mayor Parks Tau will answer all your burning questions on services and issues in the city in our new interactive “Ask the Mayor” column.
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Saturday Star