Five things I’ll be looking for in the next Mayor of Cape Town

1) someone who deals well with complexity

The challenges facing Cape Town are complex and interrelated. Unemployment, gangsterism, violence against women, climate change, increasing cost of living, immigration, racial division, failing parastatal services — the list goes on.

Cape Town needs a Mayor who is comfortable with the lack of easily sellable silver bullets and able to lead not only an administration, but a business and civil society culture of facing our problems in adaptive and collaborative ways.

The new governance uses collaboration and adaptation, not coercion and mimicry. A new Mayor will seek advice in diverse networks of leaders, and support an institutional capacity within the City of Cape Town that values diversity, responsiveness and innovation above compliance, accolades and rule making.

2) a true champion of spatial transformation

Cape Towns new MSDF and BEPP set a vision for spatial transformation. A new Mayor needs to have the humility to not reverse recently passed plans, and the integrity to stick to these despite pressures from interests that would have otherwise.

Implementation of spatial transformation means district plans that stimulate value in traditionally not-well-located areas (spatially targeting investment in transport, social and community facilities, district planning & utilities offices as well as urban management and incentives in areas such as Mitchells Plain, Langa, Athlone, Khayelitsha, Mfuleni & Blue Downs) while doing more to convert private value to public good in well performing centers (by, for example, fast tracking an Inclusionary Zoning policy).

This will require political guts, too — to use both regulation and influence to put an end to sprawling single land use mega housing projects on the periphery (by both private and public sector).

3) someone who understands that Cape Town is more than the City of Cape Town

The future of Cape Town is determined every day by the actions of small and large developers, businesses and individuals.

Cape Town’s Mayor needs to develop programmes of action that leverage the mandates of other parts of government, bring business on board (through regulation or incentive) and mobilize active citizens.

This requires being open to critique, and the ability to mediate between competing interests, with public value as the compass.

This also means building an institutional stack within the City administration that fosters engagement, holism and working together towards integrated outcomes, over bureaucratized and compartmentalised performance measures and power struggles.

4) someone who takes the long view

Starting mid term, this Mayor has more incentive than ever to jump into small trinket short term projects designed to secure a second term come 2021.

Quick wins should only be sought if they offer potential for advancement in radically new directions of inclusion, resilience and transformation.

This view should also drive new metro finance models — leveraging growth where it happens, expanding on initiatives like the Green Bond, seeking further innovative finance mechanisms and manage public assets and resources in socially and economically productive ways, rather than a short-term highest immediate value lens.

5) someone capable of forging social compacts across racial divides and across sectors

A rise of populism, blaming foreigners or rural-urban migration, or certain classes is all too easy in economically constrained environments. Cape Town has no shortage of opportunists waiting for wider divisions.

A new Mayor will need to be willing to hear different voices, but assertively present a vision for Cape Town that acknowledges reality (we are not a World Class city for all…), but has a place for all in its future.

This means being a champion of new localisms, being intolerant of nostalgia for an unequal past, and presenting a strong alternative to populism that integrates local culture and place making with entrepreneurship.