The following speech was delivered by the DA’s Mayoral candidate for eThekwini upon his acceptance of the nomination.
My fellow South Africans, people of eThekwini,
It is an enormous privilege to take the lead in this movement that is going to bring change to the people of this beautiful city.
It is a responsibility which I do not take lightly.
I stand before you today to say that I accept the nomination to be your mayoral candidate for eThekwini.
I want to thank the leadership of our party and to express my deep gratitude for this honour.
This place where we gather today, Chatsworth, is a special place for me personally.
It is the neighbourhood where I spent most of my childhood years, walking its streets, spending hours in the parks and catching little fish in the streams, when it was safe to do so.
It was the people of this community who taught us that if we want to achieve something important in life, we must work hard for it, because nothing in life comes easy or free.
It is that lesson that I reflect on today, because what we are about to embark on won’t come easy, but I know it is possible.
Just 300 metres from here, is the school where I completed my high school years.
Although we only had basic facilities, we had a good education system. Our teachers were qualified and committed.
They shaped us to become responsible citizens that could make a meaningful contribution to our society.
But it took looking beyond my wonderful dedicated educators to see and realize that not everyone was as fortune.
Just a few kilometres from here in Lamontville and Umlazi, children of my age didn’t have the same. Many of them didn’t have toilets or playgrounds.
And although we had only basic facilities, we had dignity. They did not.
This was the society we inherited from the evils of the past: Where inequality fuelled division and racial division pulled us apart.
But through our sheer tenacity, and through our commitment to uniting South Africa, together we wrote a different future: one in which we have secured equality for all of us.
I have served the people of this city, this province and South Africa as a public representative for many years. I have served in Parliament as a Shadow Minister, been a constituency head to thousands of people across this City, and have dedicated my life to serving you. It is a call the gives purpose to my life, and energy to my body every day.
Today as people of Durban, all of eThekwini, all of KwaZulu Natal and all of South Africa – we are all fortunate to live in a society where we are all equal. But, in practice, we still have a long way to go for that equality to translate into fair and open opportunity for all people. We are not there yet.
So, we must keep fighting.
I want you to envision with me a different City and a different Metro. I want us together to chart a new way forward, where the gains of freedom and equality will see a City delivering services to all residents, and will mean that everyone has an equal foundation. A metro that delivers on the basics, fairly, for all people.
There are still far too many desperate people in our city, who live in extreme poverty and cannot afford to put a decent meal on the table for their families.
The highest number of informal settlements in the country exists right here in Durban.
Thousands of families live in about 600 informal settlements in this city. For them, life has not yet realised the change they deserve.
The vast majority of people who live in our city, are middle class families. They work hard every day, to put their children through school and raise them to become responsible citizens.
These are the parents who invest every available resource they have, investing in their children’s future.
For them, life has become even more difficult as the cost of living increases every year. Daily life has become a real struggle, just to get by. They work hard, pay their taxes and rates, and then pay double taxation to pay for the services their city fails to deliver.
They live in fear, doing everything possible to avoid becoming another victim of crime. And so they pay double taxation for security covering up for the safety services their city fails to deliver.
And although they spend their entire adult lives, investing in their children’s education, they are anxious about their future, because they know, opportunities are limited, and the few that do exist, are are too often given to insiders and politically connected persons.
I have seen over the years, how this City government, and the one before, have torn people apart, just because we look different, or speak different, or pray different.
We have lived our lives watching how this City government, and the one before, conditioned us to hate each other.
And while they are busy dividing us, they are also busy destroying our City through decades of corruption and mismanagement.
And these are the reasons why thousands of young, qualified people have left this city, to build a better life in other cities or other countries around the world.
For me this is personal. Sharon and I had to endure the heartbreak of seeing our daughter move abroad because the opportunities just didn’t exist for her, and her safety was at risk.
Like all parents, we too have realised that opportunities here are limited. It is one of the saddest and most difficult things that any parent has to deal with. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
We CAN change it and we MUST.
I am proud to stand for a Party that cares so much, that our track record is one of delivery. The best delivery in South Africa.
So, as the DA we CAN build a city where ALL our children have a future, a home, safety and economic opportunities – I mean real jobs, careers, businesses.
Regardless of the colour of our skin, for as long as our children are willing to work hard and build a better future, they deserve a government that does the basics right to give them the foundation to thrive, whether they are black or white, Indian or coloured.
This is what equality should look like. This is the dream we were all promised in 1994, and the truth of the matter is, that this is a dream only the DA can deliver.
This is the dream that the DA is making possible in towns and cities all over South Africa, where people have put their faith in us to change the direction of our beautiful country. Many people critique the DA without caring to look at facts, and the facts do not lie. Where the DA governs in Metros, we put 75% of the budget to low income homes.
That what all low income homes in eThekwini deserve too.
If we work hard and turn things around in this city, we can create a place where people run TO our city for opportunities, and not AWAY from the City.
Because we all deserve better, I know that you know the majority of residents in eThekwini have had enough. I am convinced that the vast majority of people who live here, want to build a city and a country, where we ALL, and ALL our children, can have opportunities to become who we want to be.
This is a fight worth fighting for. Today, I stand before you, asking each and every one of you to join hands with us. Let’s change the direction that our city is moving.
Let us be the ones who stand together to say:
We deserve service delivery
We deserve to be safer
We deserve our taps to flow clean water
We deserve for clinics to deliver healthcare
We deserve street lights that come on every night
We deserve storm water pipes that carry rain away
We deserve sewers that carry sewage safely
We deserve roads without potholes
That is what we can do, if we build eThekwini together.
Let us the be the ones who will re-write the history of this beautiful city. Let’s get behind the DA and rescue the future. Because only the DA can do this.
Today marks the beginning of that journey. It is the start of building a new future for the people who live in this beautiful city.
And if we cannot change it ALL in our lifetime, then let’s get started on a journey that our children can complete.
There was a time when people from all over the world travelled to our city to enjoy our beautiful beaches and warm weather.
Hotels along our beaches were packed and tourists took to our streets, with cameras and video cameras to capture the beauty.
Today people are swimming in sewage, and the tourists have disappeared. We can change that, and I know WE CAN.
There was a time when you opened your tap and water was certain. Today communities go without water for weeks on end.
More than half of the water that this city receives is leaking into the ground. because they didn’t bother to fix the pipes.
And while hardworking citizens are paying for water that is wasted into the ground, our city government now wants you to pay an additional tax, to clean up the mess they created in the first place.
Instead of investing in the infrastructure, they squandered the money, and we are all suffering the consequences of corruption and mismanagement. We can change that, and I know WE CAN.
There was a time when business was booming here and to get a job meant sending out a few CVs.
But now, so many businesses have closed shop and moved elsewhere, because they’re tired of the discrimination and they have to pay a bribe to secure a government contract.
Businesses are struggling and this is why so many people have given up hope looking for a job.
Millions of young South Africans are sitting at home and cannot afford to put a plate of food on the table. We want to change that. And we know WE CAN.
The DA is doing it in Midvaal in Gauteng, we are doing it in the Western Cape, Chris Pappas and the DA are doing it in Umgeni and we will do it right here in Durban too.
Because only the DA has the capacity to bring change to eThekwini.
When this current city government spends millions of rands every year on bodyguards and security to protect themselves while our children cannot walk safely on our streets, nor can they play in our parks without watching over their backs, something is wrong.
When a government spends millions on lavish parties feeding themselves until their belts cannot hold their stomachs in any longer, and ordinary people have to hustle to find their next meal, something is seriously wrong.
When a city government hands out millions to their political friends instead of investing in a better life for its citizens, something is seriously wrong.
And that’s why we need to start painting a new picture for our city. A picture that shows a government working for its people, and not for itself.
There are so many young people who live here, with brilliant ideas, who dream about running their own successful business, all they need is a little help. Well, I want to tell you today, as John Steenhuisen announced a week ago, HELP IS IN ON THE WAY.
Within the first few days of taking over this city, we will come in with a new broom to eradicate corruption and close the taps for those crooks who have been stealing our money.
That money can be used to deliver services, put more police on our streets, build decent houses, and bring dignity to people. And we will partner with business to grow this economy, to create jobs, and provide the foundation for small businesses to grow.
Within the first few days of taking over the city, we will start a process of reducing waste and make life easier and more affordable for people in the city.
From day one, we will start a process to recover more than R40bn that this city has not bothered to collect, and we will direct that money towards fixing the pipes, so people can get better access to water and not have to pay for water seeping into the ground.
We have the difficult task of turning around more than two decades of poor governance, mismanagement and corruption. I know, and I believe that it is possible.
But I also know that over the next twelve months as we campaign, there will be those who will want to break our spirits and tell us that what we are trying to achieve is impossible.
We will not listen to them, because CHANGE IS POSSIBLE and it is worth fighting for.
Let me tell you why change is possible.
All over our beautiful country, more and more South Africans are realising that we CAN build a better country if we resist the temptation of be divided by race and choose competence and good governance instead.
There is something amazing happening in our time. People have had enough.
Just a few days ago, in a by election not far from here, voters had enough of being lied to. They abandoned their traditional political party loyalty and voted for competence and change. I want to thank the thousands of voters who put their trust in the DA. You are the brave ones who are fighting for change.
But this is no isolated incident. Over the last 15 years, town by town, city by city, millions of South Africans all over the country are getting behind the DA.
Because we get things done. We govern better. We deliver more, and we don’t steal people’s money. That’s why South Africans from ALL backgrounds are giving us a chance.
That’s why more and more south Africans are waking up to the reality that local government is not just about politics, it’s about getting the job done. It’s about competence, clean governance and capacity. This is how the DA gets things done, and our opponents have finally accepted that they don’t have the capacity and that DA run governments perform better.
Some of the leading analysts and major polls show that the ANC in eThekwini won’t even get 20% in the next election. This is a watershed moment in our history.
And that’s why we are here today to say to the people of this city, if we stand together and get behind a government with a proven track record, we can build a better Durban for everyone.
I also want to thank those special people, who over the past few years, never stopped fighting to bring change to our city, it was those millions of people who stood behind us and had faith that we will win.
They never gave up and we never gave up on them, and now it’s time to finish what we started years ago.
And I stand before you today to say. LETS DO THIS ONE MORE TIME, TOGETHER!
Because change is coming to Durban.
I also have a message for those desperate South Africans who for some reason keep their hope in the current eThekwini government to change their lives for the better while nothing changes. And I ask you, how much more abuse are you willing to take?
You were promised a better life but all you got was better lies!
It is time to stop wasting your dreams on a group of corrupt cadres who care about nobody else but themselves.
Give the DA a chance and we will show you what real change looks like, because we can and we know we will. We will deliver for you, and everyone else.
I know that there are millions of people, praying and hoping for a DA government that will bring real change and build a better future for our children. And while we stand ready to deliver that hope, hope and prayer alone, will not bring change. You can complain all you want, and yes, we must pray for it, but nothing will change until you vote for it.
For far too long some in this City have left others to decide on the future, and this is why we are in this mess.
The road to decline happened because so many stood by, watched, and did nothing.
No one can stand on the sidelines watching others destroy our future. We have to stand up for a better city, it will require every single one of us to get out there and fight for the future we want to build.
I want to make a public promise that we will work every single day of our lives to reverse the declines that this government has brought us, when we are elected to govern eThekwini. We will work hard to restore confidence in this city’s government.
This is why I make a public undertaking here today, that if elected as your mayor, I will subject myself, and my family, to a lifestyle audit, every single year, that I occupy office, and that audit will be published for all to see.
This is how we roll in the DA; we work for the people we serve, and not for ourselves.
Over the next few months, we will be walking the streets and visiting every community from Tongaat in the north, to Umkomaas in the south and Hillcrest in the west.
We will mobilise every person we can reach to join hands with us and help us build a better city. I want to invite you all to join us on this journey.
I also want to invite every community organisation, civil society, ratepayers and residents’ groups, come join hands with the DA and let’s build a better city and a better future for our children.
It is time to get behind a party, that has changed the lives of millions of people, in cities and towns all over the country where we govern. And we can do that right here in our own city too.
Listen up DA, ITS TIME TO STAND UP FOR DURBAN and do even more.
If we stand up together, we will be stronger together. And nothing can stand in our way to build a better future, and a better city for the people we love and care about.
Change is coming to Durban. So, let’s get down to work and let’s build eThekwini together.
We CAN. We MUST! And together I promise you we WILL!