28 years of democracy have not delivered what they should
WATER, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink.
So tell me now
What else can a poor fellow do
But sit right down and think?
So goes the opening lines of British singer, Tommy Steele’s song, Water Water.
The lyrics resonate appropriately with the poor citizens of oThongathi (Tongaat), the town located in the heart of South Africa’s sugar belt. At the time of writing, the town has gone without water for 30 days.
To be a tax-paying citizen in South Africa, an individual must be blessed with three attributes: the art of listening patiently, the ability to tolerate fools and the skin of a rhinoceros.
Over the past month, our political representatives have become the target of derision because of their failures to countenance abject failures in the delivery of basic services like water and electricity – never mind the removal of trash or maintaining infrastructure.
What is the obligation of the government to its people? To lord over them or to be of service to them?
Mxolisi Kaunda, the mayor of the eThekwini metro, has been beating a hasty retreat, offering all sorts of excuses since the April floods ravaged several parts of the metro.
The partisan furies unleashed by some of his party’s councillors for the most part were downright abusive, and the solutions offered by the city often re-treads years of racial bias over service delivery to ratepaying citizens.
It’s a rude awakening as the country was congratulating itself on 28 years of a non-racial, non-sexist democracy. That 435 people died and more than 60 were missing as a result of the floods, did not seem to matter.
Kaunda went awol. Fears of sanitation and the outbreak of cholera gripped the people.
The ANC-run metro was down the toilet. It’s an appropriate metaphor for the local government’s politics. It was left to non-governmental organisations, religious institutions and charitable bodies to rally to the welfare and comfort of flood victims.
We tend to describe ourselves in superlative terms. We have the best Constitution, the best judiciary, we host the world’s top events and we crow about a “world in one country”.
“Ah you have such a beautiful country!” is a familiar refrain of visitors.
A tad too effusive. It’s music to our ears and an alibi of sorts. It gives our mandarins an opportunity to dwell on inconsequential matters.
The scene is breathtaking from any vantage point overlooking the city. But the stench leaves one breathless as filth piles up for days on end.
The words of indignation can multiply and become more colourful.
The question is: How else can people react? Will the contrived sense of community subsume the ugliness in the face of the metro’s return to pork barrel politics?
Using the public purse to swing public opinion – otherwise known as pork barrel politics – is nothing new to steer votes. In the colonial and apartheid years, white suburbs were more than adequately serviced at the expense of marginalised black residential areas.
Under the ANC-controlled metro, the shoe is on the other foot.
Traditional DA constituencies and Indian and coloured areas again bear the brunt of disproportionate access to government money for flood relief.
Mayor Kaunda is understood to have said disdainfully, there is no crisis. He can get away with that. He doesn’t answer to them.
Of course, it’s easy to heap scorn on him. He may be the victim like most of us. The villain of the piece is his party, which makes such appointments possible.
“Internal organisational battles are simply transferred to local and provincial governments where groups push for control of these bodies and eventually to resources to finance the battles in the organisation.”
An opposition party could not have put it better.
Among the parlour games intellectuals and amateur know-alls tend to play during moments of intense boredom is something called counter-factual history or, better still, virtual history.
In plain language, this involves asking the question: What if? and then proceeding to let the imagination run riot – imagining what God’s alternative plan could have been.
Communists, for example, are prone to endlessly speculate the future of the country had their Chris Hani emerged unscathed from the shooting outside his home.
As a cricket fan, my counter-factual favourite is wondering what could have been cricketer, Basil D’Oliveira’s career had the years of apartheid not interrupted his poetic flow.
On a more serious note, we could use counter-factual history to drive home the facts of some features of our own contemporary history of governance.
This is why it’s important that some, incensed by the goings-on at the eThekwini City Hall, undertake to tell people of metropolitan Durban where it would have been if local government expenditure had been wise, efficient and honest.
The actual cost of 28 years of racial bias and uninterrupted folly may prompt a rethink. It may even prompt the conclusion that those screaming “anti-ANC” at the sceptics should take a closer look at the mirror.