Play it again, Dan
If incoming Cape Town mayor Dan Plato is sanguine about taking over after the stormy reign of Patricia de Lille, it is apparent why — he lives for his work
● Where does Dan Plato the politician end and Dan Plato the family man begin? It’s a question Cape Town’s new mayor won’t even begin to address, and it’s soon clear why: his job is his life.
“There is nothing like free time; I work seven days a week,” he said. “I am out even in the middle of the night if people call and tell me someone has been killed. I go out and comfort them.
“On Saturday afternoon I prefer not going anywhere. I love just sitting in front of the television and watching rugby and soccer. I played soccer up to the age of 40, rugby and a bit of cricket. I even ran the Two Oceans Marathon.”
Despite his sporting past, Plato looked exhausted as he packed up the office he has occupied for the last seven years as the Western Cape community safety MEC.
On Wednesday, there was uncertainty until the 11th hour about whether Patricia de Lille would stick to her agreement with DA leader Mmusi Maimane and leave the mayoral office. Eventually she confirmed that she would be out by 7pm, and on Thursday Plato was sworn in as a councillor.
He knows life won’t get any easier after his election as mayor at a special council meeting on Tuesday.
Taking a break from packing up an office strewn with files and papers, Plato acknowledged that the challenges awaiting him in his second stint as mayor were very different this time.
Unity challenge
For one thing, the 58-year-old politician has to heal the DA caucus’s deep rifts, which culminated in De Lille agreeing three months ago to relinquish the mayoral chain. Her final council meeting was marked by the resignation of five of her allies, who promptly mounted a ferocious attack on what they called the DA’s “racist regime”. Two more left the DA with her on Wednesday, one left on Thursday, and De Lille said more would follow.
On top of the unity challenge, Plato has to deal with the fallout from several administrative bungles that have left the DA red-faced after a decade in which it bragged about its Mother City government being a model of what it could deliver elsewhere, given the chance.
Many of these bungles, dating to 2015, are described in a contested 2,000-page report by law firm Bowmans, which has conducted a 10-month investigation into the affairs of Cape Town’s transport and urban development authority.
“I am aware of the investigations into senior staff,” said Plato. “[The alleged irregularities] happened under the watch of Patricia de Lille. I don’t want to say much about that.” However, he knows some of the issues will require his attention.
Plato, who replaced Helen Zille as mayor in 2009 when she became Western Cape premier, believes the city council’s affairs are worse now than when he relinquished the mayoral chain to De Lille in 2011.
“I am not happy currently with the level of service delivery. We need huge improvement,” he said. “When I handed the city over to Patricia de Lille, the city was at its all-time high in terms of service delivery,
There is nothing like free time, I work seven days a week
our fiscal situation was great and we had clean audits. It was a well-run city. Now, everybody is saying ‘Will you make it?’”
Plato’s spell as mayor was not illustrious and his detractors on the opposition benches don’t think much of him. Perhaps the task of filling Zille’s shoes was too big. But he looks back with particular pride at Cape Town’s role in hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
“We pulled off a wonderful event. The fan park, the building of the stadium and signing-off of documents, inspecting the stadium, receiving Sepp Blatter, Jérôme Valcke and Danny Jordaan, sharing platforms with them … that was definitely a highlight for me.”
Plato’s spell as MEC was less glamorous, but relatively free of drama — except for when the head of detectives in the Western Cape, Maj Gen Jeremy Veary, said Plato had used government funds to pay informants and conduct intelligence operations to besmirch his name. The MEC denied the allegations.
The new mayor, who cut his teeth in politics as a United Democratic Front activist and is a former member of the New National Party, said since being elected mayor-designate he had met members of the council’s DA caucus and instructed them to “bury the hatchet”. And he intends tweaking the mayoral committee to enhance his vision and service delivery.
“Since I was announced as the incoming mayor, I made it my business to call individuals and groupings of councillors to my boardroom,” said Plato.
“I phoned them personally, I summoned them to come. I said: ‘Now you have a chance to speak your heart and mind, what are the underlying issues and how can they be resolved?’
“I think I have resolved 85%-90% of the issues already. I have laid down the rules, I have laid down the foundation.
“My take was that for any individual causing problems, it is now time to bury the hatchet and bury your self-interest. The interests of the party you serve are bigger than you as an individual.”
Top priorities
Plato listed bringing unity to the caucus, service delivery, fighting crime, the housing backlog, traffic congestion and the failing commuter rail system in the Cape Town metro among his priorities as mayor.
He said the province had 550,000 people on its housing waiting list and 85% of them were in the metro. But the city could build only 8,000-14,000 units with the annual budget it receives from the Treasury.
Surprisingly, he was sympathetic to the ruling ANC about the housing crisis.
“It will take us 20-30 years to get rid of the backlog. Even if I wanted to blame the national government, I can’t. Everyone is grappling with this problem,” he said.
He intended to prioritise the mystery of burning trains, improve security on the rail network and tackle traffic congestion, which is worse than anywhere else in SA. But he would not be turning his back on the fight against crime.
“We cannot leave crime-fighting in the city to the police. The city must play its role with regards to street lights, clearing of bushes, providing clean water, seeing that there is a sewerage system in place, that there are clinics, fire services, that there is a good road system and that the water is clean and drinkable. And that there are waste removal systems in place.”
Plato rejected opposition claims that the city’s budget over the years has been prorich.
He said he intended to continue with De Lille’s pro-restitution spatial planning approach “to bring people nearer to the city”.
“The people who are paying for the bulk of the budget — the affluent — don’t get so much from their communities in return for the tariffs they pay. It goes to the poorest of the poor. I can testify to that, I have looked at
For any individual causing problems, it is now time to bury the hatchet
the city’s figures already,” he said.
Efforts to get the incoming mayor to share his personal life drew a blank. He confirmed only that he is a “family man” and that his children “are grown up, so I don’t have to worry about them”.
He would rather talk about the soup kitchens he is running “out of my pocket” and how he helps the destitute to bury their relatives.
Among the items the staunch Orlando Pirates fan packed for his new office were a soccer ball and a mini rugby ball.
“This is six years’ worth of paperwork,” he said, surveying the piles covering the carpet.
“I have shredded a lot of papers already but some documentation is very important. Like this one. It is the national antigangsterism strategy. I can’t throw it away.”