Vote me out if I don’t deliver in five years – Mashaba
ALEXANDRA - The Democratic Alliance’s mayoral candidate for Johannesburg Herman Mashaba launched an ambitious plan for the city in impoverished Alexandra on 13 March.
The Democratic Alliance’s mayoral candidate for Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba, launched an ambitious plan for the City on 13 March.
A crowd of party members gathered at the Central Johannesburg College in Alex where DA party leader Mmusi Maimane also addressed the crowd.
Mashaba’s bid under the theme ‘If Joburg works, South Africa works’, stressed the need to turn the City around which, he said, was dysfunctional with a high rate of unemployment and poor service delivery and crime, which made a mockery of its claim to be a world-class African city.
His plan is premised on a public service which would put people first and cut down dependency on consultants and red tape to save resources for more improvements to service and of response times to residents’ concerns. He urged community members to vote him out if the plan failed to deliver in five years.
The plan promises to:
- Promote small businesses and their partnership with big businesses for skills transfer and real job creation by eliminating restrictive laws.
- Assist small and aspirant businesses to access municipal contracts.
- Connect people to training and employment opportunities.
- Eliminate bad governance and reservation of jobs by employing only the best and qualified people, regardless of political affiliation.
- Eliminate corruption and wasteful expenditure by ensuring that tax revenue is used for the public’s benefit through the construction of clinics, schools, housing, integrated transport and roads networks and other essential infrastructure.
- Give people title deeds to their properties.
- Eliminate corruption in housing allocation and provide incentives for entrepreneurs who build environmentally-friendly and sustainable homes.
- Improve living conditions in informal settlements.
- Implement skills programmes for school leavers to prepare them for work.
- Establish early learning day care centres to enable parents to go to work.
- Provide sporting facilities to support local talent development.
- Declare corruption as public enemy number one and fast-track the prosecution of offenders.
- Deal with crime and drugs effectively by training Metro police, and developing a centralised database on criminals and crime trends for use by all law enforcement agencies.
- Promote a work ethic for civil servants to pride themselves on.
Mashaba said he would draw experience from his successful business empire to make the City corruption free, investor friendly and one that provided residents with more job opportunities.
