Prioritise administration over politics

Even the most politically naive among us have noticed how political parties stumble all over themselves to woo voters when close to an election. This has been done consistently enough to demonstrate that political parties will listen attentively to people only close to an election. It is as though democracy is only about promises and lies close to an election, then arrogance, looting and consumption for the four years in between. It is a pity that we still seem no closer to a change in this perspective. Maybe the business of looting is too engaging for leaders to take time to consider the folly of this perversion of democracy. The rise in the number of service delivery protests is evidence that our people have identified the period just before elections as the period of greatest impact for protest. It is also clear that the level of violence, disruption and destruction of property has been associated with the amount of attention that can be extracted from the government. None of this is consistent with the ideals of a functioning democratic state, or with the development of a country. The protests in Alexandra raise very material concerns of the residents. However, we also notice a disturbing “game of politics” going on. The essence of this “game” is blame-shifting and political point-scoring, neither of which has any bearing towards solving the very real and imminent challenges facing Alex. It is important to note that the same kind of challenges facing Alex also face countless townships in South Africa. This is why the handling of protests like the one in Alex represent massive missed opportunities. If we solved the challenges found in Alex, we could create a model of such solutions to roll out throughout the country. But if that is not the interest of political parties which lead government, and their interest is only shifting blame and scoring political points, we have little hope of creating such valuable solutions. There is no question about the depravity of the ANC and what it is prepared to do to win votes. Its shenanigans are under the spotlight partly because it is in power nationally and has been for over two decades. The DA has a shorter history in government and has its share of shenanigans, though certainly not on the same scale as the ANC. Whilst the DA has not been able to eradicate the problems faced by residents in the metros it has led, it often faces slightly less scrutiny than the ANC. The DA’s failure to solve these deeply ingrained problems is clearly evident in Alexandra. It may be that the problems have been allowed to remain for too long, or that there is no conducive policy action nationally to reconfigure the spatial development patterns inherited from apartheid. The fundamental problem – or at least part of it – is precisely how we relate to our politics. It seems we have not yet figured out that politics is useless when it comes to solving actual problems. Politics may be perhaps the only way to gain or contest power, as our political parties are all too aware of. But as a way to solve problems, it is utterly useless. In fact, politics has proven consistently that it is prone to exacerbating problems instead of solving them. This is why societies that put politics and political principals above everything else are prone to becoming societies where nothing works. We seem well on our way to becoming such a society, thanks to the ANC of Ace Magashule and his brigade of book burning supporters, among others. Whilst we merrily call governments administrations, as though they are the same thing, we have allowed too much of the ANC’s propaganda that it was ANC politics which brought about freedom to poison South Africa. As a result, the primary importance of great administration has been lost to the unrelenting feed about the supreme importance of politics above all. The ANC’s lack of appreciation for good administration has been consistently shown by its cadre deployment and its ceaseless pressure on good administrators to overlook protocol in favour of the party. We desperately need to turn this around. Administrators and administration must be given support and prominence rather than interference from clueless politicians. Only then will budgets released for places like Alex’s R2bn allocation be effectively put on the ground as work done by administrators and conscientious professionals. Grand “political promises” like those issued by Ramaphosa in Alex recently are utterly inadequate and unacceptable.

We have not yet figured out that politics is useless in solving problems