Mogomotsi Mogodiri
Pretoria - The dramatic scenes that characterised the ousting of the speaker and executive mayors of the City of Joburg and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality in the past few weeks should act as a lesson in how not to configure government, especially at the local level.
Instead of residents and service delivery being the preoccupation of parties and councillors, what South Africans have witnessed has been people offering themselves to the highest bidders in pursuance of selfish interests at the expense of those who elected them.
The perceived hate against the ANC has been hyped up and then presented as a cover for small parties to gang up against the one that received the highest votes during the recent local government elections, and even the previous one.
South Africans are being bombarded with sustained propaganda about the “alternative”. When one looks at what this represents and what it means, it becomes apparent that these are simply smoke and mirror efforts devoid of any plan to ensure better service delivery and stable and good governance and clean administration.
It’s a subterfuge to not only irregularly or even unlawfully amass wealth for individuals and their handlers, but to also lay a foundation to reverse the limited gains that have been made since the political settlement was entered into in 1994.
A number of commentators are shouting that “the time is up for the ANC and the only question is who will replace it”.
This is a well-crafted and choreographed construct that is being bellowed and repeated consistently with the hope that it will not only gain traction and be etched into the public psyche, but that it will also have a demoralising and debilitating effect on ANC members and leaders alike.
Taking a leaf from the former minister of public enlightenment and propaganda in Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels, these commentators and their political and economic masters are repeating a lie often with the false hope that it will be perceived as the truth and people will believe it.
It is regrettable that some within the ANC, including some leaders, are beginning not only to believe this vicious and misleading propaganda, but are also publicly verbalising it.
While the ANC is facing an existential crisis, the party’s members generally, and leaders in particular, should be vigilant not to fall victim to propaganda warfare aimed at obliterating their own organisation and reversing our hard-won democratic gains.
It is common cause that significant progress has been made not only on the political front, with South Africans having a right to vote, but also more and more access is being opened in as far as potable water, decent sanitation, electricity, health care and housing, among other services, are concerned.
There are still more significant strides to be made, with acute challenges including energy insecurity, persistent high levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality, corruption and other malfeasance being ever present.
It therefore goes without saying that the ANC has to roll up its sleeves to fix our country, including honestly fighting against corruption (not optics), building a strong developmental state including viable local governments, securing our energy supply instead of further destroying Eskom, and addressing other pertinent issues, top of the agenda being native landlessness and economic exclusion.
South Africans are justifiably angry and alarmed by what they have hitherto regarded as a reliable agent of fundamental change, the ANC, not only straying off course but also betraying their hopes and aspirations.
The propensity of leaders to be arrogant, aloof and insensitive while flaunting what is mainly ill-gotten wealth in a sea of hunger, poverty and lack, has not helped the ANC’s cause.
The perception, which is a reality, is growing that the ANC has been repurposed for wealth accumulation and self-aggrandisement for an elite that doesn’t care about the rest of South Africans who languish in poverty, unemployment, inequality and landlessness.
These unfortunate developments have caused great harm to Brand ANC as people are daily getting alienated from the organisation and detesting it, while its political foes and doomsayers are capitalising on the self-inflicted injuries.
It should therefore not surprise anyone who is honest to hear that the ANC’s electoral fortunes have been deteriorating in the recent past.
Its traditional voters are staying away from the polls for legitimate reasons, including not being able to identify with the organisation that has morphed into a monster that readily self-destructs.
This also seems to be the same organisation that is ready to not only surrender the limited transformation ground that has hitherto been covered, but also seems to be out of touch with the people’s daily reality of poverty, unemployment and inequality, let alone land hunger and economic exclusion.
The warning shots have been fired by the voters and the ANC can ill-afford to ignore these vocal voices and their unequivocal messages. If it does, the doomsayers’ prophecy of the ANC garnering less than 50% of the votes during the 2024 general elections, at best, or being confined to the dustbin of history, at worst, will come to pass.
To adequately address these questions, there is a dire need to look beyond and through the optics. There are lies, propaganda and obfuscation while there’s reality.
The lies and propaganda being peddled that are, in the main, aimed at delegitimising the ANC and dislodging it from power are being exposed with the failing Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and City of Joburg DA-led administrations.
The deteriorating situation including these metros being on the brink of or bankrupt belies the false notion that the DA has a monopoly on good governance and clean administration.
It also demystifies the racist notion that corruption has a colour and that white people are not corrupt or incompetent.
The auditor-general’s report on local government reads like a script for a horror movie.
There is no accountability, with some municipalities failing to submit annual financial statements, corruption is rife while governance is in a sorry state, leaving residents to feel the brunt.
The ANC as the governing party in the vast majority of these municipalities has not covered itself in glory, with its indecisiveness, ineptitude and failure to hold its deployees accountable.
When residents go without clean water for days or weeks, if not months, on end, the ANC cannot but take the blame where it governs as its silence or inaction sends a message that it doesn’t care for the people, but only for its cadres.
This conspicuous silence and debilitating paralysis will have a direct impact on its electoral fortunes.
Hence the need for ANC structures to be rooted and connected to their communities to ensure service delivery, and not be obsessed with power and money.
Otherwise, the ANC will lose massive support and either be restricted to the opposition benches or forced to enter into coalition arrangements that, at times, are unprincipled and to the detriment of residents.
It is common cause that coalition governments are an unstable lot all over the world. They are an unpalatable pill imposed on us by voter choices that can be easily avoided if political parties do what appeals to the voters and remain their servants. Taking Johannesburg as an example, the ANC failed to garner the requisite simple majority to govern without entering into a coalition government, both in 2016 and last year’s local government elections.
This led to smaller parties led by the arrogant, racist and disdainful DA ganging up against the ANC to govern Johannesburg. This arrangement that is driven by an inexplicable hate for the ANC was made against the backdrop of the ANC having won the vast majority of the wards across the city.
The question therefore is: Who does this coalition of haters represent and who are they accounting to?
Clearly, the current electoral system is archaic as it has served its usefulness of accommodating minorities. It is now promoting an absurd situation where those who have not been elected directly by the majority are allowed to impose their will on them. It also promotes not only a lack of accountability, but also corruption as reports abound regarding horse-trading while money exchanges hands.
In the recent past, accusations and counter-accusations have been made between parties in desperate attempts at holding on to power or seize it. This is unhelpful as the residents and their needs get more and more neglected while the elites’ tussle for a prime place at the trough rages on. It also perpetuates optics, as the real issue is not necessarily coalitions but our electoral system.
Whether the DA-led or ANC-led “government of local unity” came about as a result of corrupt manoeuvring or not is a matter for the relevant authorities to attend to. It would be helpful for the ANC in Johannesburg to focus more on service delivery and good governance for it to disprove the narrative that it “seized power for selfish ends”.
Obsessing about it will only perpetuate the shenanigans as it scratches the surface.
It is long overdue that the current system that does not allow the single biggest party to form a government be scrapped, and a truly representative system introduced.
The new system should recognise the will of the voters (it’s ludicrous that a party that was voted by the majority of wards is prevented by those who came through an amorphous proportional representation to govern) as this set-up would ensure genuine accountability.
As South Africans reimagine our country’s electoral system, it should not be about the elites further entrenching their grip on power. Instead, we need to wrest power back from them so the people can truly govern.
Pretoria News