Citizens unite to save Makhanda
‘What happens here will happen in the rest of the country’
The city of Makhanda, formerly Grahamstown, is home to the National Arts Festival, Rhodes University, a nest of private and public schools, and a regional high court. It should be a lodestar for the impoverished Eastern Cape. Instead, headlines for the city’s first quarter of 2019 make for grim reading.
In February, open sewage swilled around the feet of residents in the east of Makhanda. With no potable water accessible due to throttling at the water treatment plant, the arrival of Gift of the Givers’ water trucks seemed messianic.
Then rubbish collectors embarked on a two-month stayaway. A month later, Eskom threatened 14-hour daily power cuts because the municipality, Makana, continually defaulted on debt repayment plans.
After civic and business groups filed an urgent application against the council and Eskom, the high court instructed Makana to fast-track another payment structure. But the relief was short-term: last week, news hit that by the end of April the dam that supplies the western half of the town will be empty.
Makhanda has buckled over the past five years, and 2019 appears to be the tipping point. A rough online count reveals about 400 homes for sale.
A crisis narrative has developed among residents, who express desperation and disgust on social media. But action by some residents – a group that spans economic, social and racial divides – provides a counterpoint; a triage of sorts.
The Grahamstown Residents’ Association (GRA), Makana Revive and the Unemployed People’s Movement have mounted a civic fight-back with peaceful protests, petitions, fundraising to fix roads, collecting refuse in the strike and court actions.
Unity such as this does not simply happen; the GRA has worked hard to involve its members in underserviced areas and give voice to the more marginalised. The perception that its members are “the DA side of town”, says chair Philip Machanick, is slowly changing.
“When I first arrived the politicians and miserable officials just did not want to talk to people like us, but now we are starting to build to some degree a working relationship.”
This relationship is, however, constantly put to the test. In 2014 the municipality was put under administration by the then minister of co-operative governance & traditional affairs, Pravin Gordhan, after he listened to the city’s civic groups.
Five years on, Makana has failed to take back the reins. Apart from its debts to Eskom (R51m), Amatola Water (R36m) and the department of water & sanitation (R38.4m), the cash balance for operational expenses presents an urgent problem: since 2016, the municipality has at any time had just six days of cover, where good practice is three months’ worth. Its cash balance in 2018 was R13.5m, from R91.3m in 2015.
In late 2018 civic groups rallied again and succeeded in deposing then mayor, Nomhle Gaga. “When I look at balance sheets of our members I wonder how people here are surviving,” says Richard Gaybba, who chairs the Grahamstown Business Forum (GBF).
Mayor Mzukisi Mpahlwa concurs. While people are living with “sewage flooding their homes, I have no space yet for strategic thinking”, he says.
Mpahlwa says he is committed to rooting out corrupt employees who have doomed the town with years of patronage projects and financial mismanagement. But the face of failure shifts: in five years, six CFOs and 10 municipal managers.
While the prospect of serious waterborne diseases keeps Mpahlwa awake at night, new CFO Gerard Goliath’s nightmares feature the litany of financial botch-ups, in particular an overspend on operating expenses of R73.3m for 2018 (or 16.9% – above the National Treasury’s deep-water line of 15%). Goliath is clamping down on overtime and incorrect budgeting around the capital budget, which resulted in unacceptably low spend on basic services and large infrastructure projects, such as roads and water infrastructure. About 78% of the 2015 and 50% of the 2018 capital budget was not spent.
If Makana continues on its present course, spending just 1.57% of its capital budget annually on repairs and maintenance of ageing infrastructure, the current crisis will only deepen through expensive decay and sewage will continue to flow.
But add the human element to the equation, and things look more positive. Key stakeholders say how connected they feel to the social fabric of the city. Says Mpahlwa: “I want to invite positive-minded individuals with influence to form a think-tank for coming up with solutions.”
As a first step, he has asked Professor Jeff Peires, a historian and apartheid-era activist, to draft a concept document.
However, Makhanda’s “individuals with influence” will need to look beyond a similar initiative that imploded in 2017. The administrator who was parachuted in – costing nearly R3m for nine months on a threeday work week – did not deploy the solutions proposed by academic, business and civil society representatives. “Polarisation, distrust and mutual ignorance in people from both sides of the economic and social divides led to the death of the project,” says Peires. He likens it to Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient
Express: “Everyone conspired to murder the victim.”
Peires says the new entity will need to be nonpolitical, yet have the authority to work at the executive level of local government. For his part, Gaybba is willing to reconvene the thinktank, but he cautions that others might be more wary.
Be that as it may, while the GRA has made slow inroads in its nonracial ethos, many members of the business community, in Gaybba’s view, have a “terrible” attitude. “If all you do is sit and worry about the municipal and national government, then pack your bags for Perth,” he says. “When you come to a town like Makhanda, you learn how to face the problems and find solutions. This is a brilliant testing ground for making it work. What happens here will happen in the rest of the country.” –
When you come to a town like Makhanda, you learn how to face the problems and find solutions