GOOD Statement by Roscoe Palm,
GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor
16 June 2026
The GOOD Party has exposed a web of shifting excuses and bureaucratic buck-passing by the City of Cape Town’s Urban Mobility Directorate regarding the collapse of MyCiTi card-loading services in Walmer Estate.
An email chain between GOOD City Councillor Roscoe Palm and senior transport officials has revealed that despite public promises to fix the issue, the City is actively generating new rationalities to delay restoring physical vending services to local corner stores.
The Timeline of Shifting Excuses:
Excuse 1: The “Bottom 5” Admission (11 June): When initially confronted, the City admitted that historical community pillars, Liberty Grocers and Coronation Bazaar, had been arbitrarily dumped into a “bottom 5 retailers” category and intentionally excluded from the new system rollout while the City “stabilised” its infrastructure. Officials promised immediate installations now that the system was stable.
Excuse 2: “Load-Balancing” Jargon (15 June): Just days later, when asked for direct contact details to finalize the rollout, the City shifted the goalposts. Instead of delivering the machines, officials deflected the query to a new bureaucrat, claiming a need to perform “load-balancing in terms of retailer distribution.”
Excuse 3: Blaming the Small Businesses (15 June): In a staggering display of pre-emptive blame, officials then attempted to cover for future delays by claiming that implementations lag when “retailers’ legal resources weigh in on the agreement.”
GOOD Party City of Cape Town Councillor Roscoe Palm stated:
“I have written to the Directorate of Urban Mobility to call out this insulting nonsense. To treat independent, decades-old family grocers like litigious corporations is a farce. These shops do not have ‘legal resources’ to weigh in on standard retail contracts. They are small businesses losing daily revenue, waiting desperately for the City to simply hand over the paperwork.
First, they were hidden away in a secret ‘bottom 5’ list, after which, according to the City’s own correspondence, the City decided to not engage with them. Then, their survival was subjected to bureaucratic ‘load-balancing,’ a process which picks winners and losers behind closed doors.
Now, the City is pre-blaming them for delays caused entirely by the municipality’s own administrative foot-dragging. The email trail demonstrates chicanery and blame shifting.
Stop the corporate speak, stop shifting the goalposts, and deliver the vending terminals to Walmer Estate.”
The GOOD Party calls on Mayco Member Roberto Quintas to cut through the administrative delays and ensure the vending systems are restored this week.
Media Enquiries: media@forgood.org.za