By Neelam Rahim

The latest State of the SA Cities Report paints a worrying picture of a country with unemployment and poverty on the increase. According to the report, Cape Town has the highest life expectancy compared to other major cities in the country, with unemployment the highest in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality. The report is published every five years by the South African Cities Network.

Radio Islam speaks to Monique Damons, who is from the network.

Monique said that the focus is on all the metro in South Africa, which is very much a national report. 

“We also focus on municipality because South African Cities Network, which produces the report, is a membership-based organization, and all of the metros, or the exception of Cape Town, are members of the network. Hence, we focus on those particular cities also because they are key in terms of the performance dynamics of all the municipalities and our cities are that they are our metros,” says Monique.

Monique also tells Radio Islam that some of the main findings include that our cities have grown. 

“We’ve grown in terms of population. We’ve grown in terms of the number of dwellings. And, what we found in terms of basic service delivery, at the minimum, our metro has maintained service delivery.” 

“If they were servicing 50 homes with water in 2016, they’ve managed to maintain that. But that doesn’t speak to the expanded need for service delivery given our extensive population growth. But most importantly, the report shows that we’ve had several challenges within our cities that have remained since 2016, and these challenges have been coming on for the better part of 20 years. It shows that some of these problems have been exacerbated and require more urgent attention,” says Monique.

This picture that’s been painted is pretty dire. Are there any solutions that the report may put forth?

“The report is very much focused on how the local government and all fields of government need to work better together and work with other sectors of society to develop a social compact to improve things. But the core recommendations in the report are trying to say that we need to get local government right because this is where the battle for South Africa in terms of making those socio-economic changes is going to be won or lost. It’s going to be won or lost at the local level. And hence we need to fix local government, make it work as it’s intended, but also devolve the funding and devolve the authority from other fields of government where it’s needed at the local level to assist local government to do things better,” Monique tells Radio Islam.