City of Tshwane

TSHWANE MAYOR RANDALL WILLIAMS PLANS TO HIT THE GROUND RUNNING BACKED BY A SIGNED COALITION AGREEMENT

Fresh from being elected unopposed, returning Tshwane Executive Mayor Randall Williams wants to hit the ground running and quickly turn the capital city around.

He believes that the only way to achieve excellence especially in rendering services to the ratepayers of Tshwane would largely depend on how political parties represented in council work together.

Tshwane is one of the most sought after metros and a strategic municipality as it’s the country’s capital, home to the Union Buildings, the official seat of the SA government. Williams was mayor of the capital for about 12 months during the tail end of the last administration which saw two previous mayors, Solly Msimanga and Stevens Mokgalapa leaving the city before their terms ended.

“The result (being elected unopposed) is pleasing for us but it comes with a lot of responsibility. We have a city that is in trouble,” Williams said just a few hours after getting the mayoral chain once again.

Williams said there were important lessons which were learnt in the last five years of governing Tshwane and that those lessons would come in handy for the new administration he will lead.

“I believe here in Tshwane we have learnt a lot, political parties have also learnt a lot. In fact in 2016 when we had formal coalition arrangements that in itself was a minority government, that’s what we ran,” Williams said. However, he said after previous council collapses on numerous occasions in 2020 due to walkouts by ANC and EFF councillors, it was now critical that there is a majority government in place tied together by a solid signed agreement going forward.

After the 2021 Local Government Election results failed to produce a majority winner in Tshwane, the DA needed both the Freedom Front Plus and the ACDP to be able to cross over the line and win the capital. Williams admitted that it was very difficult to govern in the last administration and emphasised that it was critical for political parties getting into a coalition to govern the city to have a written coalition agreement in place.

Before Williams took over as mayor, the city was placed under administration by the Gauteng Cooperative Governance MEC, Lebogang Maile, just as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc in South Africa.

The Nelson Mandela statue on the Union Buildings grounds Tshwane is one of the most sought after metros and a strategic municipality as it’s the country’s capital, home to the Union Buildings, the official seat of the SA government.

At that time Tshwane did not have a mayor and a municipal manager, and a budget had not been passed as several council meetings had collapsed and failed to quorate.

Addressing the media after being elected

“I can relate to my 12 months experience where I ran a minority government without issues and we were able to function normally. I had a 44% vote in council and we all learnt to work together,” Williams said.

He said being placed under administration “was not an enjoyable experience”.

“There must be signed coalition agreements and these agreements must be made public,” Williams said. He reiterated the call that political parties must be given more time after the elections to be able to put together coalition agreements which are very solid and can be able to run hung councils like the Tshwane one. “We are going to have more coalition governments in South Africa and we need to amend our legislation to make provision for that,” Williams said. He said the two weeks which political parties in SA are given after the results are promulgated were not enough for firm coalition agreements to be reached and signed.

He believes it is important for all political parties represented in council to join hands and work together irrespective of their differences. “We still have a lot of work to do, we have a long way to go and hopefully we can all work together in council, all the parties should be able to work together and put the interests of the residents first,” Williams said. He said he hoped that political parties would “stop fighting and concentrate more on service delivery” as the new term starts.

“I believe we can do it, we can turn the city around and we can make the City of Tshwane one of the best cities in the world if we all work together,” Williams said.

He said Tshwane needed to have “sound processes in place” to ensure that the metro delivers on its mandate to the people of the city without any delay.

As Williams returned as mayor, Katlego Mathebe also returned as Council Speaker with Christo van den Heever also retaining the position of Chief Whip of Council.

Unlike other Gauteng metros, the DA crossed the line with the help of the parties it already enjoys a good working relationship with, which would make Williams sleep better at night.

Among the key issues that Williams will most likely be focusing on during this new term is the long-running water quality problems in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria.

In his State of the City address in April 2021, Williams had announced that upgrades at the Rooiwal Waste Water Treatment Works in Hammanskraal were almost halfway done.

Old infrastructure at the Rooiwal Wastewater Treatment Works is mainly to blame for the Hammanskraal water crisis that has lasted for about a decade, way before William’s time as mayor.

Rooiwal is the biggest water treatment plant in Tshwane, treating almost half of the city’s waste water. Williams said it will remain in operation during the upgrades project which will run until 2026.

He said the multi-phase project will be undertaken to upgrade and improve the waste treatment plant which has led to sewage or poor treated waste water getting discharged into the river, which feeds into the Leeukraal Dam, a source of water for Hammanskraal. Having hit the ground running, Williams is well on his way of fulling his mission to turn Tshwane into a world class capital city.