12

ANC needs to grasp the nettle

ZWELI Mkhize was forced to stand firm this week as MPS began agitating for Eskom to be given the right to sell electricity directly to householders, bypassing municipalities. It’s an interesting gambit – and understandable given the current R139 billion abyss owed to the utility.

The argument is simple: the municipalities are incapable of supplying power and then collecting the money owed for service rendered. The problem is that it is unimaginably facile and short-sighted. If municipalities are incapable of supplying power and getting what’s owed, then the same goes for all the other services. Does the national government step in and do the same for water?

Water and lights are a key component of every municipality’s financial structure. Some residents don’t pay for them – not because they can’t but because they won’t, a practice dating to the defiance campaigns in the 1980s to bring the apartheid regime to its knees. It’s continued ever since April 1994 as a presumed dividend for the poor.

No Anc-run government has had the stomach to grasp this nettle for fear of losing votes. With the elections looming, there’s even less chance.

Shifting the responsibility to the utility isn’t the answer. People won’t pay irrespective of who the money is owed to. Even thinking of giving Eskom, the compromised poster child for state capture, this kind of responsibility borders on criminal irresponsibility.

Taking municipalities’ key source of revenue will only serve to render them officially bankrupt. What the government needs to look at instead is how to fix failing municipalities, but that’s a bigger ask than fixing Eskom.

The simple answer: pay for what you use, as we do from data to petrol and food.

The ANC, though, isn’t prepared for the possible price.