Mayor Dan Plato launches first-ever Resilience booklet

SPEECH DELIVERED BY CAPE TOWN EXECUTIVE MAYOR DAN PLATO ON 28 NOVEMBER 2019 AT THE LAUNCH OF THE CITY’S RESILIENCE STRATEGY.

Good afternoon

Consul General of the Netherlands

Members of the Mayoral Committee,

City Manager,

Members of the Executive Management Team,

Ladies and gentlemen.

Our beautiful city, Cape Town, like all cities around the world, faces a number of large global challenges which we must confront bravely and proactively.

Urbanisation, globalisation, rapid technological change and climate change are all occurring at the same time.

While we set out to achieve our big goals like reducing unemployment and defeating crime, we are at the same time impacted by large shock events. The most prominent recent example of a shock that impacted all Capetonians and our economy, is the extreme multi-year drought.

The worst drought in a century tested us in many ways and taught us many lessons; lessons which helped shape our first-ever resilience strategy.

Through our implemented water-saving strategies and the collective effort of 4 million Capetonians, we were able to navigate this enormous challenge.

Let me use this opportunity once again to thank Capetonians for their immense effort in defeating Day Zero, and for continuing their water-saving efforts today. We must not become complacent now, as rainfall remains far below average and dams are at a good capacity because of our continued efforts to save water.

But other shocks hit our city or some of our communities on a regular basis. Fire in informal settlements, load-shedding and breakdowns of the Metrorail all cause significant disruption to the lives of Capetonians.  In most cases, the impacts of these shocks are felt most severely my vulnerable and poor communities.

And then there are shock events that may become more common in the future, particularly as climate change and technological change accelerate even more. Examples of this are heat waves and cyber-attacks which are less familiar to the people of Cape Town.

Today we launch the Cape Town Resilience Strategy, a strategy for the whole of Cape Town to respond to shocks and stresses we face as a city.

Capetonians are at the heart of building resilience. We have emerged out of hundreds of years of racial oppression under colonialism and apartheid, and continually grapple with overcoming the legacies of our traumatic past.

There is much work still to be done. There are many more challenges to work on together, and there are going to be shock events in our future which require us all to act.

There are several actions in the Resilience Strategy which require partnerships between communities, organisations and government to build resilience. For example:

• There are opportunities to partner with residents to make our communities safer through the Walking Bus programme. There are already 55 areas with walking buses, and my intention is to expand the programme to another 20 areas in the near future.
• Through the Neighbourhood Safety teams
• And through the ward-based law enforcement officers who will assist Neighbourhood Watch groups.
• One of the actions in the strategy is to grow the number of walking buses in Cape Town.  This is a programme that offers safe passage for school children and peace of mind for parents. Volunteers walk with groups of learners to and from school.  It is a multi-faceted programme that builds in many co-benefits like first-aid training, counselling for youth at risk and training on community issues such as gender-based violence and substance abuse.

Another important initiative in the Resilience Strategy is to grow the number of Neighbourhood Safety Teams.  This initiative, when deployed in a particular area, is an integrated intervention that brings together resources from across departments in a targeted and deliberate way.  We are having success with the first deployments in Delft and Bonteheuwel, with the intention to expand teams in further areas with high crime rates.

The Resilience Strategy has actions that need to implemented across very different geographic spaces.

For example, at a national level, there is a need to once and for all receive the determination from the national Department of Energy that the City can purchase renewable energy from Independent Power Producers. This is vital for improving the energy security of Capetonians and for achieving our climate mitigation goals.

At a regional level, there is an action on improving partnering across the large Western Cape Water Supply System for improved sharing of both the benefits and risks among all water users in the system.

At a city-wide level, there is action to develop and implement a comprehensive heat plan to help Capetonians be resilient to future heat waves.

At a district level, there is action that builds resilience considerations into district planning, in preparation for the approval of the 8 new district plans by Council in May 2021.

At a community level, there is an action rolling out a Neighbourhood Resilience Assessment tool, which can be used by Capetonians to assess the resilience of their own communities and come up with plans to prepare for shock events.

At a household level, there is an action on expanding the women and girls’ resilience programme, which is a targeted approach to improving the skills and capacities of beneficiaries, particularly from vulnerable communities.

At the personal level, there is an action on using scarce resources to improve the mental wellbeing of Capetonians.

In total there are 75 actions in the Resilience Strategy. They have multiple owners, not only within the City government but across organisations and communities.

I would like to challenge all organisations across Cape Town to take note of the organisational commitment to resilience contained in the Strategy. There is much that any organisation can do.  Here are some broad ideas to start that journey.

• Investigate and understand how shocks and stresses create city-wide and local place-based risks for your organisation
• Engage with the people in the city who are most impacted by your decisions
• Engage in training and capacity building across your organisation; and
• Undertake action and investment in initiatives which strengthen resilience.

I would like to challenge all my City colleagues, both in the Mayoral Committee and in the Executive Management Team, to maximise the resilience in projects and programmes that they lead.  Ask yourself how can you make the project or programme increasingly resilient to a range of shock events like a heat wave, or cyber-attack.

In closing, I would like to thank 100 Resilient Cities for its investment into Cape Town in support of the development of this strategy. Cape Town is proud to be part of a network of cities committed to building resilience to current and future social, environmental and economic challenges of the 21^st century.

I look forward to the implementation of the actions in this Strategy, and I commit to playing my part in this regard. Thank you.