Jordaan has his work cut out
JUST how contested the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality is going to be in next year’s local government elections has become plain to see with the ANC’s dramatic intervention this week, replacing mayor Ben Fihla with SA Football Association boss Danny Jordaan.
The 82-year-old Fihla wasn’t the only casualty – the party rang the changes across a host of other senior metro posts, hot on the heels of the announcement by Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu that R4.6 billion had been set aside to build houses – and create jobs – in the metro over the next four years.
Taken together, they represent an unprecedented amount of national attention, not just for a province, but in a single metro.
The ANC has good reason for concern: It originally won Port Elizabeth comfortably, but narrowly managed to retain control in the last local government elections, a situation exacerbated by its inability to find a mayor who can deliver on the mandate and see out the term, with Jordaan being its third executive mayor since the country went to the polls in 2011.
There’s no doubt that Jordaan is a very able administrator and politician.
He not only oversaw and drove the hosting of the best World Cup to date – and the only one on African soil – in 2010, he has also survived the festering cauldron that is South African soccer.
He is a singularly impressive individual with a very real track record of delivering what he has promised.
We have no doubt that he could make a very real difference in the Bay area, but perhaps time is against him given the scale of factionalism and dysfunctionality in the metro, as alluded to by the ANC itself.
Opposition politicians are gleefully claiming just that.
The real question at this juncture is why, if the metro is as problematic as it obviously is, did the ANC wait this long to get stuck in and appoint a candidate of this calibre?
The stage has been set for a fascinating local election campaign, which should serve only to further deepen and entrench our democratic culture in its third decade.