The failure of our cities is a terrifying portent

IAs a citizen, I’d like a more credible explanation as to why in this rainy season lightning has suddenly become an existential threat to human activity

f it’s true that when cities fail, the country cannot be far behind, the state of our cities must represent a terrifying portent. Consider Johannesburg, the nucleus of the country’s economic hub of Gauteng. The selfstyled “world-class African city” is today anything but — driven to the brink of paralysis by perennial power cuts and, lately, water shortages. All part of a broader story of infrastructural neglect and decay.

Or take Durban, once the country’s tourism jewel, which of late has been a gigantic dumping site because of labour action, its trademark beaches having long turned toxic.

Even Tshwane, the seat of government, has not escaped the degradation, with its CBD now a shell of its former self, while citizens are plagued by service failures.

Johannesburg has been in the news because of its water shortages, with parts of the city dry for up to half a month. The city’s explanations have left one more sceptical than hopeful, especially given that the problem is not new, having reached its peak in the past two weeks.

First the city managers blamed a lightning strike which knocked out the Eikenhof pumping station. If you’ve lived in Johannesburg long enough (or elsewhere on the highveld), you’ll know that electrical storms are par for the course. As a citizen, I’d like a more credible explanation as to why in this rainy season lightning has suddenly become an existential threat to human activity, leaving businesses and ordinary citizens high and dry in the figurative and literal senses. Also why, if the lightning story is true, such a crucial installation was left vulnerable to the elements.

Adding to the stew of explanations, water officials cited high temperatures and users’ reckless overconsumption. On other occasions they have blamed population growth, which anyway should be taken care of by proper planning, part of the reason we regularly do a census.

It seems officialdom’s favourite ruse is to bury citizens under tons of technical detail. Thus we now know that there is a valve somewhere in the sprawling water system that alone can shut off supply to thousands of Johannesburg households. Or that, in the case of Eskom, power stations have boiler tubes that sometimes spring leaks and plunge the country into widespread darkness. Unless properly and fully explained, Joburg’s valve story must fall into the same basket of incredible tales as Alec Erwin’s famous Koeberg bolt and Eskom’s wet coal fable.

While regularly sharing information in a crisis can be deemed good stakeholder management, even a demonstration of public accountability, the primary need of citizens is access to reliable services rather than being turned into lay engineers. On the other hand, it is the job of government leaders and employees to provide the services.

It’s not a difficult distinction, this. Officials and their political masters appear to think that every service failure, euphemistically called a “challenge”, can be explained away.

Explanations in themselves do not solve problems. What matters are the outputs. The inevitable question, then, is why those who run the country, the so-called city fathers (and mothers) seem unable to address the problems they are elected to deal with. Is it incapacity or a simple lack of interest in the job? In the case of Johannesburg, we have to ask what, besides continuously brawling for positions, those elected to council have done to prevent the city’s descent into the dire straits it is in, since they were elected three years ago.

What about the workers themselves? Those who, under the pretext of fixing roads, dig them up and leave them open for weeks, even months. Did they get the jobs based on skills and qualifications, or some other, irrelevant, criteria? Are they being supervised at all? And do the supervisors themselves have a clue about the job at hand?

Don’t start me on what passes for public communications when the power or water systems fail. In the face of increasing urban decay, the well-to-do have responded by retreating to gated communities and security estates. Corporates, too, have abandoned the old central business districts for new, more salubrious and less crimeridden ones.

But how far, and how long, will they all run? Experience has shown that when the rich and their companies retreat, the decay and its consequences follow, including buildings hijacked by criminal syndicates and neighbourhoods that turn into veritable hellholes.

A popular idea in times like these is that citizens must do things themselves. Indeed, they can fill a pothole here and there, and perhaps drill a borehole in their backyards. But citizens cannot replace the bulk services of a Rand Water, while most lack the financial muscle to bypass a nonperforming electricity provider. In that context, it is perfectly legitimate to ask: where do our taxes go?

In our cities and towns, there is a titanic battle between progress and decay. Its outcome will determine the look and character of South Africa in the years to come. Rather than simply wringing their hands, shouldn’t citizens light an almighty fire under the people pretending to run the show, many of whom have never run even a vetkoek stall?