Voters need a mindset shift for the future

Once more the battered and bruised South African populace are subjected to the nauseating false promises of trumpeting politicians in the run-up to the local government elections. A drastic voter mindset shift is needed to avoid total collapse, argues CARL DE VILLIERS

ANYONE with half a grasp of what is going on in the country is in no doubt that local government structures and services are generally in a state of collapse.

Those still standing are nearing meltdown.

There are a few exceptions but even there, decay creep is relentlessly on the march if one looks deeper, outside the flashy malls and silos of suburban affluence.

Gradually, basic service delivery failures are becoming more frequent - something very much in evidence in Zululand in recent times - causing much frustration and hardship for citizens, and ruin to many job-providing entities driving the local economies.

The reasons are obvious municipalities infested with incompetent personnel, a lack of proactive management and maintenance, absence of qualified expertise, corrupters fleecing taxpayers’ money, and a serious lack of work ethic are but some of the major maladies causing one after the other once-functional municipalities to step into the realm of disintegration.

And they mostly have no meaningful response or rapid solutions to handle crises.

The incompetence and budget maladministration are so deep-rooted, they can’t.

They simply sing from the same public relations hymnbook to pacify, and then attempt to ignore the angry multitudes. They will ‘look into’, ‘investigate’, ‘address’ and ‘undertake to fix’ whatever it is that is causing dissatisfaction, always with the rider that service delivery to the people is their utmost priority. Nonsense!

Municipal officials believe they can survive on promises.

So, with the local government elections around the corner, South Africans again suffer the indignity of having to absorb the same tsunami of empty promises and blatant untruths the politicians spouted forth during the previous elections - of which very little came to fruition.

From every stage or community sport field the heavies are out pledging better things to come if voters will only entrust them with their ballots - again.

The question is: for how long will long-suffering South Africans have to endure the consequences of party political strife and ineptitude, keeping on believing the unbelievable?

HL Mencken is credited with the quote: ‘People deserve the government they get, and they deserve to get it good and hard’.

Isn’t that exactly what we got in overdose over the past decades?

The time has come to change to a system of independent candidates being nominated from within each community; committed public servants whose only interest is real and effective service delivery.

This won’t, of course, be a factor on 1 November (although it will be interesting to see what kind of support independent ward nominees receive as public disgruntlement grows), but a mindset shift for the future.

Party political power struggles and vested interests simply have only one consequence for citizens - no power to the people.