GOOD Speech delivered today at the City of Cape Town Council Meeting by Suzette Little, GOOD Deputy Secretary-General & City of Cape Town Councillor:
Speaker, in less than a year, the City has tabled an adjustment budget in August 2025, again in January 2026, and now in March 2026. Each time, the explanation shifts. Each time, the targets move. And each time, it’s sold as being normal, but it’s not.
Let me highlight only a few issues that go to the heart of our communities.
The land acquisition target has been reduced from 47 hectares to 16. In a city facing a housing crisis, that is not a refinement. It is a retreat. Fewer hectares mean fewer homes, and fewer homes mean more people left waiting. Yet the City continues to auction off land with no regard for those on the housing waiting list.
With regards to the 900,000 job seekers on the database, the City has lowered its target because it was underperforming. How is that possible? R39 million was taken from this programme because the City could not deliver. Not because there is no demand, but because the programme is not working as it should.
Then there is the financial reality.
The City’s own documents acknowledge that what is billed is not what is collected. Residents are under pressure. Non-payment is rising. Affordability is declining. These are not small issues. So, we must ask: will we be able to afford the loans we have taken on without clear projects, and can we account for that spending? Because the Mayor has yet to answer what happened to those funds, despite repeated questions over more than 12 months.
This report tells us that “several submissions” were received, yet no number is provided. But when you read Annexure C, it shows there were only 7 comments. Again, this reflects a lack of meaningful public engagement. As one of your own councillors said, it was a tick-box exercise.
We have now adjusted the budget for the third time in nine months, just three months before the end of the financial year.
Speaker, perhaps the Mayor can now explain this “City of Hope” narrative he so often repeats.
Because at this point, the real question is:
Hope for whom?
GOOD Digital Transformation: GOOD supports the use of technology to improve government services.
Darkside Hooker
Fun South African Fact: South Africa is known as the “Rainbow Nation” thanks to its mix of cultures across the country. The status of being a cultural “melting pot” is evident in the fact that South Africa has a whopping 11 official languages: English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, isiXhosa, IsiNdebele, Sesotho, Northern Sotho, Setswana, SiSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga. Most South Africans speak more than one national language. IsiZulu is the most common first language and isiXhosa is second. Fun fact – did you know the people of Wakanda speak isiXhosa in Marvel’s Black Panther movie?
Woo Woo
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.