COGTA ANNUAL REPORT 2020

support, we have conducted a series of bilateral meetings with each of the municipalities in Gauteng; looking to tackle service delivery head on, and administrative and governance challenges they are faced with so that we can address pertinent problems that prevent them delivering quality services in the manner that citizens rightfully expect. These meetings have tackled challenges such as: waste collection, electricity issues, water shortages, infrastructure maintenance, revenue generation and fiscal viability, capacity and skills deficits and so forth, and from each meeting we have created action plans with set timeframes and deadlines in order to resolve all these issues. This is something we are tracking on a monthly basis as part of our ongoing Section 154 support. We arranged a meeting between Eskom and each of our municipalities to try and craft a way forward in terms of payment of outstanding debt, as well as to iron out issues between our municipalities and Eskom. These fruitful engagements have had positive outcomes whose results will be seen in the years to come. We are excited about the opportunity that municipalities now have to purchase their own power from IPPs, as this will add to our energy mix providing greater energy security for our city region. We have been working in tandem with our municipalities to create a comprehensive water security plan, which will create a water-efficient city region. We have also come up with exciting new ideas about how to assist municipalities in investment facilitation, working in tandem with relevant provincial entities. In order to address audit challenges as highlighted by the Auditor General on an annual basis, we are working to support our municipalities so that they can implement preventative controls in key areas of accountability if breached, which by default become a natural source of consequence. Working in tandem with relevant provincial departments such as Health and Community Safety, we are dealing with the unwanted phenomenon of illegal initiation schools, given that there have been no fatalities in any of the legal schools. We are participating in a provincial task team on illegal schools in this regard. We are working on building and maintaining a database of traditional surgeons and nurses, in partnership with the department of Health, and are also working in partnership with them to formalise traditional healers and help them

get better organised. As part of our constitutional role of supporting traditional leadership institutions, we are working on assisting in the development of customary law jurisprudence as we believe traditions, like all things, are evolutionary and not static. The urban planning unit, which has been moved to this portfolio, has been integrated and is being positioned to provide proper planning in line with a development masterplan so that we can better coordinate all development in our city region. Local government is a powerful redistributive tool, through the resources allocated to it and ours remains the need to ensure that there is an entrenched culture of disciplined execution of key priorities so that the lives of Gauteng citizens can be materially improved.

Hon. Lebogang Maile MPL MEC of the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements, Urban Planning and Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs

G A U T E N G P R O V I N C I A L G O V E R N M E N T I C O- O P E R A T I V E G O V E R N A N C E A N D T R A D I T I O N A L A F F A I R S ANNUAL REPORT 2019/20 7