Cape Town Mayor Geordin-Hill Lewis has described 2025 as the most demanding and consequential year of his term, using his annual Mayoral Minute to reflect on governance, infrastructure, housing, safety and the long-term vision of building what he calls a ‘City of Hope’, reports Cape {town} Etc.
The Mayoral Minute, released ahead of the festive season, revives a tradition that dates back more than a century and was last observed in the late 1970s. Hill-Lewis said he reintroduced the practice as a way to ‘pause and reflect’ and to create ‘an informal historical record’ of the city’s journey, written plainly rather than through formal reports.
‘In a country beset by government mediocrity, we are trying to buck the trend,‘ Hill-Lewis said. ‘We’re trying to demonstrate a model of success in South Africa, based on the pursuit of true excellence in the public service, and genuine care for every resident.’
While acknowledging that Cape Town is ‘certainly not there yet’, the mayor said 2025 marked a year in which ‘more meaningful steps’ were taken towards that goal.
A central theme of the reflection was infrastructure investment. Hill-Lewis confirmed that the City invested R9.7 billion in infrastructure during 2025, just short of its R10 billion target.
‘Cape Town’s infrastructure investment is far bigger than that of any other city in South Africa,’ he said, adding that this was ‘not about bragging rights’, but about ‘what it actually takes to build a city that works’.
According to the mayor, key indicators such as sewer overflows, pipe bursts and treatment capacity are ‘moving encouragingly in the right direction’ as a result of sustained investment.
Housing was described as one of the most complex and emotionally charged challenges facing the city. Hill-Lewis highlighted new planning legislation passed this year to enable micro-developers to build affordable housing faster, calling it a potential turning point.
‘It is no exaggeration to say that this is the only workable plan to reduce informal settlements in South Africa,’ he said.
The City has also released land for approximately 12 000 affordable housing units at various stages of development. However, demand continues to outstrip supply, driven largely by semigration. ‘It is a measure of the relative success of our city that our countrymen are voting with their feet,’ Hill-Lewis noted.
Reflecting on internal challenges, the mayor admitted frustration around cleanliness in informal settlements, but said progress followed the appointment of a new Urban Waste Management director, Jason McNeil, earlier this year. ‘He has brought a strategic and analytical clarity to the problem…that gives me great confidence we will crack this problem,’ Hill-Lewis said.
The mayor also used the Mayoral Minute to reflect on the City’s bruising budget process, which included widespread public objections and ongoing legal challenges from organisations including SAPOA and AfriForum, as previously reported and noted in News24.
Hill-Lewis stressed that budgets, while unpopular, are where values are ultimately tested. ‘Budgets are not glamorous. They don’t “trend”. No one reads them. But they are where values become real,’ he added.
Safety remained a dominant concern throughout the year, according to the mayor, with the City stepping in to cover ‘gaps left by national government’. Hill-Lewis said the deployment of 800 new Metro Police officers marked the largest single-year expansion in the unit’s history, while the City continues to push for the devolution of investigative powers to address gang and gun violence.
Energy security also emerged as a defining theme of the year. With ongoing instability in the national electricity supply, Cape Town switched on its first landfill gas-to-power plant in 2025, a municipal first in the country, which now supplies electricity to around 4 000 households.
The City has also continued expanding energy trading and wheeling arrangements, while investing R4 billion over three years in grid upgrades to support a more decentralised and resilient energy system.
With the next local government election expected in late 2026 or early 2027, Hill-Lewis acknowledged that this Mayoral Minute may be his last of the current term.
‘That, dear residents, is up to you,’ he said.
As the city heads into the festive season, the mayor thanked residents for their patience, criticism and engagement, adding that while building a City of Hope is slow and complex work, 2025 moved Cape Town closer to that vision.
‘I look forward to continuing the journey with you in the year ahead.’
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Picture: Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis / Facebook
