Spending where it matters will see Cape Town flourish

At the end of March, we tabled the fourth – and second-last – budget of this term of office. We will soon conclude public participation on the budget and then vote in Council to adopt it.

Looking back on the past three and a half years, it is encouraging to see so many of our biggest infrastructure investments and milestones being realised and reached. Initially, the ever-increasing targets of pipe replacements, road repairs, power procurement and affordable housing seemed daunting. But we have stuck to our promise of increasing our infrastructure spending on each new budget, and we are 100% on track to deliver what we pledged.

This record investment in Cape Town’s infrastructure is not a luxury or mere nice-to-have. You only need to look at every other South African metro, where timeous investments have not been made, to know that our budget priorities are critical and urgent. Spending on infrastructure is non-negotiable if Cape Town is to avoid the fate of those other cities.

We’re ramping up our water and sanitation investments, particularly in lower-income communities, where proper sanitation is the biggest enabler of a life of dignity. In addition to our multi-billion-rand upgrades of wastewater treatment works, the Cape Flats bulk sewer upgrade is the biggest project of its kind in South Africa.

Likewise, our MyCiTi expansion into the metro southeast, connecting Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain and other communities with Wynberg and Claremont, is the biggest such project ever undertaken in our country. As part of the penultimate phase of this MyCiTi expansion, we have just broken ground in Claremont, and we are seeing wonderful progress on our “Sky Circle” in Lansdowne. Once completed, this route will be a true gamechanger for many Capetonians.

Perhaps the biggest news from the 2025/26 budget, however, is the R6,7 billion spend on safety and security, which will see 700 new municipal police officers deployed across town. These are in addition to the 400 officers we’ve added since the start of the term. We continue to lobby for more policing powers from National Government so that we can effectively investigate crimes and get criminals locked up.

Yet we’re also investing heavily in our own boots on the ground to take back our communities from gangsters, drug dealers and other criminals.

These are some of the budget highlights that will future-proof our city and prepare it for the population and economic growth that is headed our way. Against a backdrop of municipal collapse elsewhere, we are bucking the trend in South Africa and showing that decline and failure is preventable. It is indeed possible to build a city of hope.

Geordin Hill-Lewis
Cape Town Mayor