Cape Town Mayor Says New City Logo Wouldn’t Cost Millions

Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille released an official statement on Friday saying that the latest media reports about the cost and nature of the city’s new logo are incorrect.

In an effort to change the city’s current corporate identity, the creation of a new logo for Cape Town became one of the most talked about topics in the city.

The South African website IOL reported Friday morning that the new logo for Cape Town was unveiled by the mayor in a recognition event held for the city’s top 500 managers. The logo was confirmed by at least three anonymous attendees of the event to be the official design that will be presented to the city council next week.

IOL also reported on Thursday that the new logo – which is planned to appear on uniforms and official documents – might cost Cape Town taxpayers R100 million or more than $9 million. Some also worry about the seemingly secretive way the logo was chosen by Cape Town officials without much participation from the public.

But officials of Cape Town deny both the alleged nature of the logo’s selection and the staggering amount attached to it by local media outlets, saying that no new budget is allocated to the project. In the official statement, the government of Cape Town emphasized that the reports circulating in newspapers and websites about the logo is incorrect and that the version appearing in various publications of the proposal of the city’s new corporate identity “doesn’t officially exist”.

To clarify things once and for all, Mayor de Lille invited members of the press to a conference that will be held on Monday.

Mayor de Lille will brief the Cape Town press of the basics of the logo including the official numbers of the project’s finances and the process by which the proposed corporate identity will be phased in during the next few years.

In the same statement, the mayor requested the media to refrain from releasing more inaccurate reports about the project and from republishing the already debunked information news outlets released earlier this week.

Cape Town’s current and soon-to-be-changed logo has been used since 2003 and depicts Table Mountain, a land formation overseeing the city’s landscape.

Serving as the country’s provincial capital, Cape Town is the second most populated city in South Africa with more than 3 million residents. Cape Town is also home to the presidential office where famed South African leader Nelson Mandela served from 1994 to 1999.

Image from Flickr.