Stephan Hofstatter
9 July 2009
column
Johannesburg — THE riots that wracked Thandukukhanya township in Piet Retief last week highlighted just how out of touch the African National Congress (ANC) leadership is with anger on the ground at councillors who abuse their positions to fund lavish lifestyles rather than serving the people who elected them.
Days after mobs armed with petrol bombs and knobkierries went on the rampage, burning down several municipal buildings and houses belonging to councillors -- including mayor Mary Khumalo -- Tim Modise debated the topic on SAfm's AM Live.
One of his guests was Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka, head of the local government department. Shiceka piously admitted the government was to blame for a "lack of communication", presumably meaning the protesters would have stayed home if they'd understood efforts under way to improve their lives.
But protest leaders I've spoken to in Piet Retief and elsewhere say it's becoming impossible to keep their followers in check because they're tired of being fobbed off with half-baked excuses for a collapse in municipal services.
Protest leader Wandile Nkonyane says he pleaded in vain with a mob not to torch Khumalo's house but there was no reasoning with them. They were convinced no one cared about their grievances, and that the time had come for extreme measures to get their message across.
The spark that lit the flame was the failure of Mpumalanga premier David Mabuza to pitch at a mass meeting in the local soccer stadium. Weeks earlier, Mabuza's office had been supplied with a list of grievances that had been communicated vocally to officials since 2006. He had apparently promised to address their concerns at the mass meeting.
Nkonyane claims to have repeatedly offered to give the authorities proof of municipal corruption and cronyism that has caused a collapse in service delivery. The protestors wanted Mabuza to put the council under administration to get services going again, and suspend officials pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations levelled against them. But instead of addressing the crowd, according to his office he was attending to "other priorities". These included holding talks with "local leadership of the ANC", who presumably told him all was hunky dory. After two days of rioting, Mabuza put Piet Retief under administration, which is all the protest leaders had asked for anyway.
These are not isolated incidents. This week, Diepsloot township in Gauteng erupted. Irate residents pointed out that they'd been on waiting lists for housing and electricity for 13 years. Last week, residents of a township outside Bothaville in Free State protested against service delivery failures by barricading a road with burning tyres and throwing stones at passing cars. Similar scenes took place recently in Orange Farm south of Johannesburg, Mashishing (formerly Lydenberg) in Mpumalanga and several towns in North West.
Some party loyalists like to portray these uprisings as sideshows orchestrated by disgruntled former ANC members who lost access to positions of patronage and privilege after Polokwane. One told me it was all thanks to the Congress of the People's desire to destabilise rural townships ahead of the 2011 local elections.
Political infighting and jostling for power clearly do play a role, mostly because they're preventing officials from doing their jobs. In reality, the ANC's practice of deploying loyal cadres at local level, and interfering with the running of local councils perceived to be deviating from the party line, allows corruption and cronyism to flourish at the expense of service delivery.
Toeing the party line has become the greatest good, even at the expense of common sense. Community leaders repeatedly point out that it's absurd not to allow South Africans to build their own houses or manage their own cemeteries. Instead these tasks are reserved for subcontractors with party connections, who thus get away with shoddy work.
The solution is simple: let local communities provide their own services where possible, appoint local administrators based on merit, charge those who break the law, and pay attention to valid grievances before frustrations reach boiling point.
Hofstatter is contributing editor.
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