Battlefields for coming elections

There are some who might look at the Joburg water crisis as reality arriving for those who live in the suburbs – having to deal with the sort of service delivery that people in townships and smaller towns have to deal with on a daily basis.

Service delivery – or the lack thereof – and the accompanying collapse of public infrastructure are definitely going to be the battlefields on which the coming election will be fought.

Even though these are largely municipal issues and the 29 May elections will be about national and provincial matters, many voters will feel that the crisis is now getting up close and personal.

Obviously, the party which will have to take the biggest stick from voters for this situation will be the ruling ANC, which is responsible for the slide into failed state status.

But it does not automatically follow that the opposition parties will benefit as the ANC suffers.

For a start, all the ANC’s opponents have promised that they will deliver services but few, other than the Democratic Alliance (DA), can point to a track record in this regard. Some DA councillors have done their party’s image a lot of good in Joburg over the water crisis by trying to intervene with Johannesburg Water and also for being there with the residents.

Others, like ActionSA, have also become involved, but there has been little sign of ANC and Economic Freedom Fighters councillors on the streets during the crisis.

Yet, will this latest crisis turn the heads of the ANC’s supporters? The majority of them, remember, live in townships and have such loyalty to the party that, despite the lack of service delivery, they will not give their political hearts to anyone else.

Besides, the ruling party has promised it will fix the country. And that might be enough for many voters.