Kaya 959, Wednesday evening

Of the total local government expenditure budget. So, how can local government be an engine for economic growth when this is a persistent issue and we are seeing statistics like that? Hi, thank you so much. You know, I remember 10 years ago, I looked at the city of Johannesburg where I live, and Herman Mashaba just became mayor. I read the Internet Greater Annual Report and I just concluded that.

He said there is a, what you call it, a infrastructure backlog of 170 billion rands. I looked at the finances and they were spending about 9.3 billion rands on capital spending. So there was no way that they could address this capital infrastructure backlog. And so ever since then, I've just concluded that it doesn't matter who's in charge, this is actually a national issue now.

Need to understand the dire situation in terms of local government. So, from 90 from 2016, when Mashawa came in, to now, rail per capita infrastructure investment must keep up with inflation and the growth of the population. So, now, over the past 10 years, the population of Joburg has increased from 4.9 million to 5.8 million, and the budget has gone down from 9.3

To 8.4. In real per capita terms, it's decreased by more than 50%. I don't know why it's not obvious to all these political parties that's one of the fundamental problems that we have. And now the infrastructure backlog is 220 billion. So, what I say is that it's delusional to believe that service charges, rates, and treasury transfers can address this massive crisis that we have.