MANDLA Radebe writes:
Recently a survey was conducted by News 24. The objective was to find out if people knew who their ward councillor is and if they are serving their communities efficiently. Only half of the sample knew who their councillor was, almost all of them never saw them physically and almost all of them would not judge whether he serves well because they had never interacted with them in any way.
That’s SA’s electoral system. Personally, I interact occasionally with my ward’s councillor by email and he follows up.
However, I have one concern about how local government politicians are elected. We vote for them based on the party they represent, not on what we know about them, i.e. who they are, what they believe and what their vision and values are.
This is a problem even at national government level, e.g. we never knew what a Zuma presidency would offer us until he was in power, except for some meaningless slogan; “Together we can do more”.
Local government is equally worse; you never know who the mayor will be because he/she gets elected by councillors after elections, let alone knowing what the mayoral term will offer you.
Cities have a huge potential to prosper South Africa, therefore it’s crucial to know who the leader is, his/ her character and vision, not just individuals we have to accept as offered by the party, let alone interrogating them.
We cannot even attach a face to the position, let alone character. Because of a veiled party culture, most of the councillors cannot tell us about themselves, e.g. If their vision is growing city’s business activity, the party may believe in socialist labour and government oriented enterprises.
If they are personally transparent, they risk being side-lined by their parties.
Their campaigns are shadowed behind party logos, reducing them merely to a face on the poster. They know if they were to uncover their independent views, they would be accused of breaching their party’s culture or of being “an undisciplined cadre”.
The voters would also discover how shallow they are to lead cities; electoral fraud! Lack of quality leadership make people claim trivial things as monumental achievements; like not having load shedding for 25 days. It’s an accepted fact that party officials serve primarily at the pleasure and favour of party leaders. Therefore it’s almost always NOT the best candidate that gets the job.
Moreover, cadre deployment as the ruling party’s formal policy exacerbates this and undermines experience, education and competence.
Consider this statement by the late Nelson Mandela in Free State in 1994: “Freedom should not be understood to mean leadership positions or even appointments to top positions. It must be understood as the transformation of the lives of ordinary people in the hostels and the ghettos; in the squatter camps; on the farms and in the mine compounds. It means constant consultation between leaders and members of their organisations; it demands of us to be in constant touch with the people, to understand their needs, hopes and fears; and to work together with them to improve their conditions.”
But the governing party will neither do nor listen to this. Who the leader is, is very crucial. I challenge all those who aspire to lead to be open to questioning. In the light of the statement above and 2016 local government elections, we can answer these questions to determine if we elected competence;
• Are we satisfied with leadership spirit, presence and expression we are experiencing?
• Was our city a safe place?
• Did leaders account as financial stewards?
• Did we feel welcome as business people to invest in our city?
• Did their decisions create jobs and confidence in the city?
• Did our views matter to them?
• Do we even know who they are and what have they done?
