In 1996 I was involved in budgetting of the Municipality. Before that it was announced that the Water and Sewerage services in the area would be handed over from a Government institution to the Municipality, In analysing the situation I found that the Municipality was going to take over a service that would mean rates and taxes would have to be increased by 100% to cover the deficits of the Municipality and there would be no funds to upgarde a service that was provided in Ballito in the 1960's and there were no water and sewerage services provided to the Black informal settlements which neeed urgent upgrading on a major basis, I contacted the Development Bank on the issue since the upgarding needs would exceed over R100 million to start with.
After some lenghty discussion the town and engineer and myself was summoned to a meeting in Pietermaritzburg where discussons started about the first cocession of water and sewerage services to private entities was disscussed and I was told to get Council to agree to that initiative. The problem was that it would be a first in SA and foreign to normal processes in South Africa, In that case I did report to Council and strongly suggested that the process goes ahead and in the end the Coucil decide in favor of the Concession proposal.
The decision was that we should work with the Development Bank on the process going forward, It was cpomplicated and in the first instance an international advertisement was necessary to find the best company to start negotating conditions with, As it was it as agreed that a French internaional consortium known as SAUR was considered to be negotiation an agreement with.
It took years to finalize the agreement which allows for the following:-
- That the concession woud be for a period of 30 years;
- That the tariffs to be charged by the company wold be approved on an annual basis by Council
- That the net profit of the Concession company would not exceed 15%
- That in the 30 year period the company wold ionvest R275 000 000 in inrastructure pgrading in the Municiality.
The Director of Finance was supposed to submit the final contract to Coucnil for approval - but h as not sure how it would work and delay the submission by 12 months, In the end I decided to do the approval of Council proposal myself and it was approved by Council in December 1999 and the contract would start on 1 April 2000.
The result was that when eonomic development in the Municipality started in 1997 - but the constant problem was the deficiencies in water and sewerage services deficiencies. Afurther problem was that upgarding of the water and sewrage services in Black informal services were also in jeopardy and my other task was to get that operational as well and to upgrade the slum settlements where the Blacks were living. Already in 1995 I was horrified to discover that in one such settlement the residents got their water from rain falling on the N2 main road, So I went to the District Council Head to get R150 000 rand for laying of a pipeline to the settlement and at thesame time got a Government grat to build a reservoir the provide water to the Shaklas Head informal settlement. That was just the beginning of the process by 2000 the municipality was involved in upgading programs in three slum settlements and the prgram was implemented and the Municipality provided 2 000 homes to residents to replace the slums.
By 2003 the economic growth was massive and we had strings of politicians trying to find out what happened, In August 2000 Thabo Mbeki was one of those, He new what ws happening and at the emeting he addressed in a hall in Nkobongo - one of the housing settlement he was very clear, After a tour of part of the Municipality there was a meeting in Umhlali attended by children from all schools in the area, he said to the Mayor - here si my speech I intended to deliver. Consider it is delivered, He then went on and stated that today I have seen the real new South Africa we all dream of.
As a result of the concesion - but also the development program resulting from it theMunicipality who became part of the Kwadukuza Municipality. In 2003 te revenue budget was R350 000 000 - by 2008 that income was R1,250 Billion Rand with minimal increases in rates and service charges.
In 2001 I was invited by organizers of an international conference in Bremen Germany on the issue of economic development and community development. However. I thought it wise to ensure that the ANC Mayor and Deputy Mayor should also attend the conference and asked SAUR to fund attendance of the confernce as well.
Now back to the present situation . Based on the fact that the Concession let to the best water and sewerage service in South Africa I was informed by an SMS that the Ilembe District Municipality has now approved that the Concession be extended by another 30 years from 2030.
So my efforts did pay dividents and I hope the fact that an initiative started by me is going to survive after I wil kick the inevident bucket.