Referendum on service delivery
The 2016 local government elections were a referendum on the leadership of former president Jacob Zuma, as the ANC suffered embarrassing losses in the country’s biggest metros. That bloodied nose left Zuma’s faction hobbling all the way to the Nasrec conference a year later, where his preferred successor lost.
This time, the polls in just over a week’s time aren’t a vote on a personality per se, but will be shaped frustration around service delivery. It’s an affliction for most of the country as increasing urbanisation and the cancer of corruption continues to weigh on the ability of the 257 municipalities to deliver even the basics.
It’s nothing new.
On this week’s cover, we republish a cover from 10 years ago that contends that service delivery would dominate those polls. The referendum of 2016 was an apparition. We’ve long been in this struggle to get the public sector to meet its mandate of servicing the people.
The excitement around the rise of independents and how they will affect these polls will be closely monitored, as communities in places such as Ficksburg are focusing on their common struggles rather than what divides them, such as race and wealth. Polls are suggesting that the most organised of these independents will be one of the major stories in these elections, along with the DA’S falling support after the heights of 2016. As for the governing ANC, its scorecard on service delivery continues to cut into its credibility.
This week, Khaya Koko and the M&G Data Desk look at the Eastern Cape and its ever-worsening rates of poverty along with the slide in basic services, such as water. Of the country’s 1.8-million indigent households, the Eastern Cape has 645 068 with the OR Tambo district municipality accounting for 153 000 and Buffalo City for 152 035. They carry 47% of the province’s poverty burden. Some 132 municipalities use a monthly income band of R1 780 to R3560 to class a household as indigent.
The struggles of the province contrast with the corruption whiff that dogs its premier, Oscar Mabuyane, and MEC Babalo Madikizela, who are alleged to have used state funds for their benefit. The sad story of the Eastern Cape is all too common.
While the EFF has waged what analysts call a successful social media campaign and reached the youth, one has to wonder whether it is fishing in the right pond, given voter apathy among this segment — especially in local government elections. Billboards on the “land” question may also be missing the point, if indeed these polls are a referendum on service delivery.
Our democracy is maturing, frustratingly slowly at times. At its dawn, most voters were married to party colours. But the electorate is increasingly asking tougher questions about service delivery and the economy, especially in the wake of a pandemic.
And independents are stepping into the breach.