GOOD Speech by Suzette Little,
GOOD Deputy Secretary-General & City of Cape Town Councillor
29 January 2026
_Note to Editor: This speech was delivered during the City of Cape Town Municipality Council Meeting_
Speaker, this report comes from the Office of the City Manager, the accounting officer of this City. This is not a marginal department. It is the nerve centre of supply chain management, contract oversight, legal risk, and the coordination of service delivery across every directorate.
Yet the City Manager’s own report confirms that key operational targets were not met in the first quarter. Budgets were underspent. Capital projects were delayed. Critical vacancies remain unfilled. Supply chain processes continue to be cited as obstacles rather than enablers of delivery.
This goes to the heart of the Council’s oversight role.
How does the City Manager credibly enforce accountability on executive directors when his own office is failing to meet its targets or resolve the very bottlenecks that paralyse service delivery across the City? When the central authority responsible for coordination, procurement oversight, and implementation cannot stabilise its own operations, accountability across the administration becomes selective, inconsistent, and fundamentally unfair.
We are repeatedly told this is a well-run city. Yet Legal Services alone spent over R20 million in just three months. Emergency and exceptional procurement deviations are no longer exceptional; they are becoming routine. That is not evidence of control. It is evidence of pressure, delay, and reactive governance.
For communities, these failures are not abstract- they appear as delayed housing projects, broken infrastructure, stalled maintenance, and service failures that end up in court instead of being fixed on the ground.
Council is therefore entitled to a clear and specific account of what corrective action the City Manager is taking to address the operational weaknesses in his own office.
Accountability must start at the top. Anything less erodes public trust and undermines the authority of this Council.
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