100 days into the job, how well is Cape Town's new mayor doing?

Walking the talk. Getting his hands dirty.  Putting his money — or the city's, really — where his mouth is.

On Wednesday morning, he arrived in a hybrid Toyota Prius in time for a clean up at nearby Joe Slovo Park.

After urging residents to work with city teams to keep their communities clean — and he promised to do this every week of his five-year tenure, if necessary — he bent down to pick up a grubby tissue.

His gloved hands filled a garbage bag with litter in just 20 minutes. Cape Town’s 35-year-old mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, gives new meaning to the old clichés as he breaks the stereotype of a privileged white male. ​

Hill-Lewis has spent his first 100 days in office working to help more Capetonians have the safe and nurturing type of environment that he did growing up in Edgemead, a suburb across Table Bay from the mountain.

On Wednesday morning, he arrived in a hybrid Toyota Prius in time for a clean up at nearby Joe Slovo Park. After urging residents to work with city teams to keep their communities clean — and he promised to do this every week of his five-year tenure, if necessary — he bent down to pick up a grubby tissue. His gloved hands filled a garbage bag with litter in just 20 minutes.

“This is a passion of mine because it goes so much to the concept of dignity. When I see the overflowing sewers it really upsets me. We have to make improvements,” says Hill-Lewis, who was inaugurated as executive mayor on November 18 last year.

The city has a substantial intervention plan to improve its sanitation and sewage systems over the next few years, he says. “We are starting very small, with the piece of litter that goes into the drain, going all the way to the multibillion investment in wastewater treatment works at the top end of the system.”

But fixing this will be a Sisyphean task unless Capetonians pitch in to keep their drains and streets free of pollution. Hill-Lewis was in Khayelitsha on his first day in office to encourage this and has not stopped.

City cleaning manager Eugene Hlongwane said the streets get dirty within a day of being cleaned if residents do not support their work. “The last mayor was also cleaning up for the community but [Hill-Lewis] is getting the community involved, leading from the front,” he says, keeping pace with the sneaker-clad mayor.

In Joe Slovo, Hill-Lewis pauses next to a shiny new garbage truck, patting it like a prize bull. Next, he knocks on a door, asking about a car wreck out front, which has stinking litter under it. “Have you seen the flies out here?” he asks the young woman who opens up. The car’s owner must remove it or face a fine, he tells her.

The mayor may look like an overgrown schoolboy but he can sound as stern, or motivating, as a principal.

One door down, the pavement has been swept, with a Springbok jersey hanging on a neat line of washing. “Thank you very much for keeping this clean!” he says to a man in the doorway. “You are very welcome here,” he greets two Malawians,  who stay in double-storey flats.

“Don’t kill me,” he jokes, narrowly avoiding being wedged between the garbage truck and a grabber lorry collecting heaps of waste. For nearly an hour, “GHL” (as he was dubbed in the DA election campaign) doesn’t flag.

Once done, Hill-Lewis slowed down enough for an interview at Century City, over cups of coffee which he bought after standing in line.

Unsurprisingly, he thinks youth is an advantage for his job. “What I have seen is that government gets very stuck in their ways and comfortable, just going through the motions.

Sometimes you need an injection of energy,” says the diehard DA leader — who has opened meetings of his 11-member executive committee to the public and initiated a lifestyle audit for all of them.

 The mayor is ambitious about tackling national problems such as crime and load-shedding, despite the limits of the city’s authority and budget. Last Friday’s crime statistics showed that Cape Town was the only place in the country “where murder had gone down significantly”, he reports.

Government gets very stuck in their ways and comfortable, just going through the motions. Sometimes you need an injection of energy

—  Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis

“We put 1,000-plus law enforcement officers into 11 murder hotspots: 40% of the murder in the city comes from just 11 precincts so we poured resources into those, in partnership with the Western Cape government, and it’s really made a difference.”

Ending load-shedding in Cape Town is the No 1 priority on his to-do list of seven, and the city has started discussions with independent power producers to get extra capacity. “Load-shedding is the biggest handbrake on the economy. We have got to fix it,” says Hill-Lewis.

Climate activist Gabriel Klaasen, of the Project 90 environmental NGO, supports the mayor’s commitment to renewable energy and rejection of Eskom’s proposed 20% tariff increases. On Friday, a 9,61% tariff increase was announced.

But Klaasen adds: “The energy injustice that still thrives in Cape Town echoes the sentiment that there are two different cities: a city catered for and those who are ‘afterthoughts’. A different approach is needed.”

Finding safe accommodation for about 6,000 or more people living on the streets is another priority for the city.

“This is a really difficult problem,” says the mayor. “We are working on how to provide better alternative accommodation that meets the standard of dignity and care, and connects people with social workers, mental-health care,  addiction programmes, and work seeker programmes, and so we are putting a lot of money into that.”

 Hill-Lewis promised the April budget would have much more funding allocated to finding solutions than the R10m for SaferSpaces allocated in the “small” January budget.

“I quickly figured out that a lot of the rhetoric in politics is meaningless. If it is not in the budget, it does not count,” he notes.

62%: increase in Cape Town’s population since 2011.

—  IN NUMBERS

The influx of migrants to the Mother City is putting huge pressure on infrastructure and services, says the mayor, but the administration is fortunate to have a payment culture and growing number of ratepayers.

“There is no trade-off between rich and poor in local government. We have to have ratepayers so we can cross-subsidise basic services and better services to the poor. That is the central formula.”

Brett Herron, secretary-general of the GOOD Party founded by ex-DA mayor Patricia de Lille, which won nine Cape Town seats in the 2021 local government elections, says the new mayor “has the capacity for collaboration”.

“If he puts this ability to good use ... then he should be able to start addressing the huge inequalities and the entrenched social and spatial injustices,” says Herron, who was GOOD’s mayoral candidate.

“So far, there is little sign that this has his attention. He is focused on photo-opportunities at potholes and doing clean-ups. Cape Town is a complex city with massive disparities of infrastructure, services and amenities.

“We need a mayor with the shoulder to the wheel addressing the complexities of urban poverty, joblessness and homelessness.”

Mitchells Plain community leader Lydia Petersen says she is glad to see the mayor in marginalised communities but now he must prioritise access to water for them. The new water metering system introduced last year is causing problems and he must fix this, says Petersen, active in the Western Cape water caucus.

“There are punitive measures if you exceed the allocation of free water but some properties have backyarders and there might be 15 people using that water. This system is not working for disadvantaged communities,” she says.

“Free basic electricity is unattainable for many, and we need to engage on that with the mayor,” says Petersen, praising him for “batting for the working class against the tariff increase”.

We need a mayor with the shoulder to the wheel addressing the complexities of urban poverty, joblessness and homelessness

—  Brett Herron, Good Party secretary-general

Hill-Lewis cares about people’s struggles. His single mother was a nurse and he grew up in a socially aware household, with great English and history teachers at high school who ignited his interest in politics.

Out of the classroom, he played rugby and captained the first team — but the first team of the school down the road,  Bosmansdam, because his did not have rugby at the time.

When he has a plan, he pushes ahead. In his first year at the University of Cape Town he founded the DA Students Organisation. “I went to the first-year politics lecture with 700 kids...  and I put up [an advert for] our first meeting and everyone burst out laughing.”

But the organisation grew from a couple of hundred members at UCT to campuses around the country, securing him notice as a rising DA star. After graduating with a BCom and honours in politics, philosophy and economics at UCT, he read a master’s degree in finance at University of London. 

Hill-Lewis served as the chief of staff to former Western Cape premier Helen Zille, who is  now DA federal chair. person, Helen Zille. In 2011, he became the youngest MP, and his last position was as the DA shadow minister of finance.

“There have been many difficult times in my career,” says Hill-Lewis. “The toughest are where personal friendships are damaged because of political disagreements.”

 Taking over as mayor was a bit like arriving at varsity, he says. “No-one tells you where to go, what to do, how to do it. It takes a while to find your feet.”

Now, 100 days into the job on Thursday, the demands on his time are endless. “My biggest anxiety is... personal time for my family,” he says, expressing gratitude to his wife Carla for her support. The mayor promised to take his six-year-old daughter to school every morning and so far he has lived up to this promise.

At home in Edgemead, he enjoys gardening, “which makes me sound very old”, and reading. He is a fan of Deon Meyer’s crime thrillers set in the city.

Looking ready to bounce back into action after his coffee, Hill-Lewis says: “What we did this morning I also find really relaxing. It’s great to get out, speak to residents, do something that is immediately rewarding.”

By him being out there, Petersen feels he is “putting words into action, he is like a new broom sweeping clean”.

Will he deliver on his promises? Only time will tell.