DA's Zille plans to cut Joburg red tape, encourage use of 'stupid rule button'

Joburg mayoral candidate Helen Zille knows how she's going to cut red tape to ensure speedier service delivery in the City of Gold.

Speaking to 947's Anele and the Club, she said she would set up a Red Tape Reduction Unit like they had when she was the premier of the Western Cape.

"Because so many things get strangled in red tape and processes. So, we will replicate that. And if anybody is being stymied and stifled by constantly being sent from pillar to post and all over the place with a simple query, then I will put people onto it, and they will find the problem, and they will cut through the red tape.

"On the other hand, I must say that a city council is what they call in law 'a creature of statute' which means we're a body created by law and by the Constitution and that means that we can only do anything in the way that the law prescribes."

Zille said that, because of corruption, there were more and more regulations that make it difficult to do anything.

"The irony is that they never prevent corruption. They just make it difficult for honest people to do the job quickly. That is the great problem."

With this in mind, she'll be encouraging officials to use a "stupid rule button".

"It comes from the private sector and was picked up by Cape Town's mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, and I'm going to follow it in Joburg as well. You have a stupid rule button on your computer, and if you come across a process or a rule that has no purpose, you can log a stupid rule complaint, and it gets investigated. And if it is a stupid rule, then it will get streamlined and possibly done away with."

She said that a big problem with the City of Johannesburg was that it did not have integrated systems like the City of Cape Town and the province of the Western Cape.

"Because we have an integrated system in which things can be sent instantly to all the different departments, and they all log together, and they can all put their responses on the system that gets cumulatively relayed to the complainant."

Zille said she was wrapping things up in Cape Town and was now almost full-time in Joburg.

To listen to Zille speak to Anele Mdoda and the Club, use the media player below: