I wish to clarify misleading information that has been driven by opportunistic opposition parties regarding the public participation report on the proposed lease of land on which the city’s power stations are located.
The City received an investment proposal from a consortium that sought to lease the land on which the City’s power stations are based to install gas turbines. The project has the potential to add an additional 800 megawatts to the City’s power grid.
In view of the current increased and continuous levels of load-shedding by Eskom, the proposal presented significant value to the City in terms of advancing energy independence. I felt it critically important that the lease proposal be brought to the attention of the residents of Tshwane to get their public inputs.
Furthermore, the investment proposal presented immense economic benefit as it would have injected approximately R26 billion of investment into the city over the long term.
I want to state it right from the start that there was no proposal on the table by the city to put in place a tender pertaining to the city’s power stations. The City is therefore not pursuing a tender as this does not entail any form of tender process which puts the city’s finances at risk. It is simply an investment proposal that the City received to lease the city’s land which we intended to take for public participation.
The City’s power stations have not been in use since 2014. These are over 70 year old coal-fired power stations that have systematically aged and become obsolete over the years. The City simply does not have the immense funding required to put them into operation again and we must explore options that would allow the City to move forward with energy generation.
The report I placed before Council yesterday but later withdrew contained very simple recommendations, with the first being a request to take the land lease proposal to our residents for public participation. This is part of the evaluation process when the City receives such proposals.
Rather than engaging on the content of the report, opposition parties such as the ANC and EFF and our coalition government member ActionSA sought to politicise this matter and attack the leadership of the City and myself with unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing.
As part of their smear campaign to discredit and attack my integrity as the Executive Mayor, a secret audio recording of an internal City of Tshwane meeting that I chaired has since been circulated, which has been clearly decontextualised with the aim of driving a political smear campaign against me.
Anyone is welcome to listen to this audio, I have nothing to hide. No unlawful instructions were given. This was a meeting consisting of robust discussions and brainstorming to consider what processes the city should use when it receives investment proposals.
The irony of this political attack is that it in fact demonstrates how thorough we were in engaging on this investment proposal. The meeting itself took place last year in August and lasted 90 minutes as officials from multiple departments and I brainstormed and workshopped the processes involved.
It had taken us over a year to bring this public participation lease report to Council after engaging extensively with identified processes and officials along with the political parties represented in Council to gauge their views as well.
It is truly disappointing to me that the public participation land lease report could not serve at yesterday’s Council meeting and was rather attacked by some political parties represented in the chamber. Particularly when the report itself merely sought to seek public inputs on the lease proposal.
The report was not tabled for approval of the lease by Council and was not placing any financial or legal risk on the City, but merely sought to engage residents on their thoughts on the lease proposal.
Nonetheless, as Executive Mayor I remain fully committed to exploring and advancing any solutions that will drive economic growth in our city and help us to become more energy independent to end load-shedding in Tshwane.