Paddi Clay: Good vibes and harsh realities in SA - Biznews

Despite a surge in national optimism following the formation of a new government, Gauteng faces persistent local issues. Service failures, inadequate maintenance, and mismanagement plague Johannesburg, with problems like water outages, neglected infrastructure, and wasteful spending undermining residents’ confidence and highlighting the need for systemic reform.

Paddi Clay

Since the formation of the government of national unity, or national coalition or whatever this new government should be called, people have been expressing an upturn in mood and feelings of hope about the future to me.

I admit most of them are probably of a pro-Democratic Alliance persuasion, given the circles I move in. But many are not.

Yet it would be dangerous to be lulled by this mood. The African National Congress, playing at “gracious host” to the foreign interlocutors in its midst, is still intent on controlling our lives in a centralised, racist, socialist way.

The good vibes many voters are feeling may be due to the fact that the national status quo appears to have changed in a positive way – that is, it has not fallen into the clutches of the MK and EFF.

That the fresh blood and specifically the DA ministers are responsive and communicative, appear able to put their foot down when something looks suspect, and have begun tackling a few of the more obvious and immediately fixable problems in their allocated ministries, is illustrating there could be a very different sort of government, more able to improve our situation as a country, given time and fair winds.

Read more:Joburg considers raising R2bn debt to tackle infrastructure backlog
Minister of Home Affairs Leon Schreiber feels there’s more confidence in SA’s future following the GNU and points to the stronger rand, cheaper imports and inputs and lower inflation and interest rates. Bankers concur, saying investor confidence has improved.

The national mood has doubtless also been boosted by the recent spate of sporting victories.   

Even as a jaded hack, with zero faith in the ANC’s ability to pivot from its current ideology or take its hands out of the till, I sense faint stirrings of “cautious optimism” about national politics and the country in general.

“Barbenheimer” elections
Part of this is probably also due to my relief at being neither in the UK under a stasi-wielding Labour government nor in the US, with the unenviable task of choosing a president in what Niall Ferguson, writing for The Free Press, has dubbed the “Barbenheimer” elections. Imagine making the choice between a vacuous candidate who babbles and a mad one who can free think his way to global nuclear war.

But there are also some harsh realities making me resist the seductive seed of hope.

For one, there is absolutely no sign that the ANC or the new official opposition shows any desire to dump the race classification laws apartheid imposed and a democratic government has continued to use and add to. Even though it is not clear how race is officially or legally determined (at least the National Party had some crackpot theory, and pencils, for this lunatic purpose) there are still 141 race laws in operation in our country.

I am particularly incensed at Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi’s adamant declaration that medical aid will go when the National Health Insurance is implemented. Even if this ends the GNU.

This is my line in the sand on NHI, the state’s latest “wizard wheeze” to milk contracts and allow it to centrally engineer deployment of health professionals as it wishes.  Health care and medical professionals as well as business organisations call it a travesty.  I intend to gather my fellow chronic patients and resist it with every fibre of my expensively medicated being.

Lived locally
But enough of this obsession with national politics. Our lives are lived locally. It’s where we hand over money directly for services for our own homes and maintenance of the public environment, and where we directly elect representatives to watch out for us, represent us in council decision making and, hopefully, manage the whole process.

If you live in Gauteng this means it is of utmost importance to train a laser lens on what is going down in local politics. All politics is ultimately local.

First, there is Premier Panyaza “Promises” Lesufi. He is clearly carrying on more or less as normal despite his party’s loss of seats and a majority. He is clearly intent on keeping or getting the DA out of any position of power in the province. Maybe he needs the moniker “Pushback”.

Lesufi acolyte, and new, recycled, Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero, stated the obvious when he told News24 interviewer Alex Patrick that things would not get better under his watch.  

Morero told News24’s Patrick on the day he assumed office that he did not believe there were any major problems in the northern and western suburbs, including Randburg, Sandton and Roodepoort and he couldn’t understand why Johannesburg residents were embarrassed by their city because “(i)t’s like everywhere else in the world” and even  Cape Town has “its own unique challenges”.

He also said his focus would be on delivery to his ANC voters as his eyes are on the 2026 local elections.

Once desirable
I am about to pay my August municipal bill, of a little over R9,000, to the City of Johannesburg. I live in a once desirable and upmarket north-western suburb, on a large erf, which is part of a DA-held constituency Morero says he doesn’t care about.

On the day Morero took office (I don’t know if there was a mayoral chain ceremony but I’m curious as to whether we even still have a valuable chain), Randburg was without water due to “unplanned maintenance”. It took four days for the repair to be done and water to return to residents.

Here are some other reasons I am not able to be wholly upbeat about our country’s prospects until we can get rid of this whole council executive in one fell swoop.

While the Randburg water problem was happening, my suburb and others around it were hit by an “unplanned outage” of power.  So don’t be misled into thinking South Africa’s power problems are over.

Joburg has for going on 10 years consistently spent below the 8% of the value of property, plant and equipment Treasury has recommended for repairs and maintenance. And the effect of that is becoming very evident.

In a recent 5 km journey to a lunch in the same constituency as my home I noted the gutters obscured by grass which is now lifting the tar of the road. Grassed kerbs along the route past the mall are spattered with takeaway food containers and there were two separate large mounds of dumped rubbish at the side of the road. A tall street light, bashed in an accident several months ago, is still leaning precariously over the road. In my own street we have barely one working streetlight.

There was one beggar at a road intersection I passed and a mother and child on a nearby traffic island. Around another corner was the man who has made a cement block covering a storm-water drain on the edge of a busy road dissecting a suburb his permanent place of residence. He has been there throughout the days and nights of this past winter.

Battle of the Somme-type craters
En route to my destination I counted a total of six kerbside Battle of the Somme-type craters, the barely filled-in aftermath of water and sanitation holes made by JHB Water doing emergency repairs.   

The spruit in the park that runs through a large chunk of this constituency is also lined and choked with rubbish dumped by the recycling “pickers” who are everywhere.

In case you think I’m simply a whingeing Joburger with nimby tendencies, here are some other recent facts that make paying my municipal bill each month a somewhat grudging act:

The Johannesburg library has been closed for four years due to fire risk and it’s had three contractors who have so far been paid R21 million to repair it. But the job is not finished and the city is casting around for a new contractor.

The contractor the Johannesburg Road Agency picked to repair Lilian Ngoyi/Bree Street in the CBD after a gas explosion wrecked it over a year ago is allegedly being fired but has already been paid R17 million. The repair deadline will not be achieved.

Three hundred people have been thrown out on the streets after the council closure of one of the city’s only four shelters for indigents as unfit for habitation (btw Cape Town has 20 of these).

Gold
If there were to be an Olympic competition for wasteful expenditure, piss poor contractor selection, and zero ability to manage maintenance, Morero and most of his predecessors would take gold.

The parties, organisations, and businesses who set out to rescue the city from its long line of abusers, when we do get rid of them, will have to be ready and prepared for the long, hard slog, tough decisions, complete systemic overhaul and iron resolve that will be required. So will residents.

Paddi Clay spent 40 years in journalism, as a reporter and consultant, manager, editor and trainer in radio, print and online

https://www.biznews.com/rational-perspective/2024/08/26/paddi-clay-good-vibes-harsh-realities

This article was first published on the Daily Friend.