By Katlego Sekhu
Today, on the Morning Show with Thomas and Skhumba, the team chatted with the newly elected City of Johannesburg’s first female mayor, Dr. Mpho Phalatse.
She shared her plans as mayor of Johannesburg and more.
On being Joburg’s first female mayor
“It’s just a big honour, firstly, to be the first woman to be elected into that position. It’s a big message, not only for me but for all women that are in the city and the country – some of our best-performing mayors are women,” she says.
The challenge ahead
Dr Mpho Phalatse is looking forward to the challenges ahead.
“There’s a big challenge ahead, and we are a minority government. We are going to try and stabilize council by working with as many parties as we can. We will form a mayoral committee as we can so that we can scrape in those relations and stabilize council.
“I’m excited about that challenge as well, but I’m also realistic. It’s so easy to work with your own people, as the DA, for instance, we’ve been together for so long, we know what we want to do and how we want to do it,” she adds.
Managing expectations
Furthermore, she wants to manage the expectations of residents.
“I want to manage the expectations of our residents so that they know exactly how different this is going to be.”
The 100-day plan
Basic service delivery is at the top of her priority list as mayor.
“During the campaign, people were asking for basic service delivery everywhere, consistent supply of electricity, water supply, and huge infrastructure challenges throughout the city.
“Some of them got to be sorted out almost immediately; others require medium to long-term solutions. So those were our plans in the first 100 days to start working on the low-hanging fruit,” she says.
“But now we’ve got other players that I’ve said we’d like to bring on, and we’re still negotiating with other parties to form a government, and then we will consult with them to agree on what we want our 100 days in office to look like.
“But areas that I particularly want to focus on are areas like revenue optimization. There’s a lot of money that’s sitting out there that’s not coming into the city,” said the mayor.
Listen to the full interview below.
