ANC’s disdain for grassroots is sowing the seeds of revolt
Zuma’s attempt to fix his Treasury blunder by moving David van Rooyen to the crucial local government portfolio will only create a different problem, writes Xolela Mangcu
IN the wake of investor outrage at his appointment of David van Rooyen as minister of finance, President Jacob Zuma decided to dump his “reject” minister on the poor black masses of South Africa.
The damage that Van Rooyen was going to inflict on the markets he will now inflict on these communities, if his troubled tenure as mayor of Merafong in Gauteng is anything to go by. It is now common cause that the community of Merafong chased Van Rooyen out before torching his house. While this kind of violence is to be abhorred and condemned, the fact that a discredited former mayor should be imposed on the entire local government sector is a sign of the times — sheer madness.
The decision is as wacky as making him minister of finance just a week before the US Federal Reserve raised its interest rates, leaving the door open for billions of rands to make that proverbial whooshing sound out of the country. The reassuring appointment of Pravin Gordhan would have been a “dead cat bounce” — a temporary respite that cannot hide the more permanent loss of confidence in our economy under Zuma’s leadership.
But who would not take their investments out if they thought they were within personal reach of the president and his dodgy appointees in our state institutions and cabinet?
Dumping Van Rooyen on local government is a continuation of the ANC’s disdain for local communities that can be traced back to the negotiations process in the early ’90s, when the party caved in to the National Party’s insistence that white municipalities should remain under the control of whites. Local government became the political equivalent of the “sunset clauses” that protected the jobs of senior police and army officers.
As a result of this compromise, the white wards had the same representation in the municipal councils as the much larger black wards. Thus a municipality of 1 000 whites could have the same representation as a black township of 100 0000 people. To put it even more bluntly, South Africa continued with apartheid local government structures for six years after the first democratic elections. The first democratic local government elections took place only in 2000, but as I argue in a book on the Independent Electoral Commission edited by Mcebisi Ndletyana, Institutionalising Democracy, the system of local democracy was not normalised until 2006. No wonder that local government is the weakest link in our democratic dispensation.
The ANC’s compromise on local government was consistent with the political culture that was being imposed on local communities by the returning exiles, whose conception BURNING ANGER: Bekkersdal residents barricade roads during a service delivery protest two years ago. Anger at the performance of local government is likely to get worse with David van Rooyen’s cabinet appointment, the author argues of change was that it was best achieved from the centre. A more impoverished conception of democratic change would be hard to come by — especially in a pluralistic country such as ours.
Ambitious local leaders deserted their communities to join national and provincial legislatures and administrations.
With the best and the brightest gone, local government became the playground of unqualified and corrupt local politicians, whom the great writer Es’kia Mphahlele called “amandla functionaries”. He noted that funds meant for community development programmes routinely disappeared into the pockets of these functionaries.
The centralising tendency in the ANC was rather ironic, given that the political and intellectual energy of the liberation struggle was always at the local level — from the black consciousness movement of the ’70s to the civic movements of the ’80s. There were probably more activists knowledgeable about local government than any sphere of government. Many of us — from inside and outside the ANC — left the country to study local government in universities around the world, only to return to the reign of amandla functionaries with absolutely no training in the field.
Surely the ANC could have found people with greater knowledge of the local government sector than a discredited mayor and a “reject” minister.
Political Theory 101 also tells us that local government is the best form of apprenticeship for national leadership. Despite failing that apprenticeship miserably, Van Rooyen was rewarded with elevation to high office. “Thixo wase George Goch!” — to borrow an expression of disbelief from Zuma himself.
This failure to build strong legs for democracy at the local level has resulted in massive loss of voter support for the ANC in some of the biggest metropolitan areas — Cape Town, Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth. The joke is on the ANC when it controls the national parliament while the country’s real economic engines are in the hands of opposition parties. That explains why it milks local government and state institutions so much. Those are the only tills it has access to, and it is milking them dry like there is no tomorrow. Understand that and you will understand the brazen attempt to grab the National Treasury. This was the big prize.
It does not require rocket science to figure out that, with Zuma and Van Rooyen at the helm, the mass desertion of voters from the ANC is only going to get worse in the 2016 local government elections and beyond. In short, whatever normality may prevail now will be the political equivalent of the “dead cat bounce” as the whooshing sound in the economy is replicated by the whooshing sound of voters.
The dumping of Van Rooyen onto local government speaks to the dangerous illusion that you can reassure financial markets while destroying their social foundations. Sooner or later, society is going to respond with even greater fury than the markets have shown Zuma so far. Word has been going around that Zuma changed his position only after he had been confronted by the bankers. He should wait until he has been confronted by the people of this country for dumping Van Rooyen on them. The fact of the matter is that Van Rooyen should not have been in the cabinet in the first place — in whatever portfolio.
The markets have welcomed Gordhan’s reinstatement, but is anyone bearing a thought for Nhlanhla Nene, who was unceremoniously kicked out for committing to the same fiscal discipline and prudence that Gordhan articulated in his media conference on Monday? Gordhan’s media conference was one silver lining to this debacle. He spoke with presidential authority — without the uncontrollable giggling that has been the trademark characteristic of our president. The ANC will have to give the people something better than Zuma if it is going to avoid the wrath of the people, not least for dumping Van Rooyen on them.
Mangcu is professor of sociology at the University of Cape Town
That a discredited former mayor should be imposed on the local government sector is sheer madness
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