While the GNU continues to be chaotic, Cogta Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa has kept calm and done the unthinkable.
The GNU presents a laugh a day. In the last month, Andrew Whitfield got axed, setting an awkward precedent for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s defence chief.
While bus drivers are taking their own lives, having not been paid since January, a dialogue is on the go that increasingly seems to be evolving into a monologue. Gayton McKenzie has been doing his thing, whatever that might be on the day, and team DA is patting themselves on the back for outsourcing state work to the banks.
And we all applauded it, such is our disdain of home affairs. Oh, and the ministers appointed to fix load shedding were busted doing what we already knew they were doing; burning diesel as ferociously as Christians burned Beatles albums.
Amid all the chaos and lack of time to consider which connected cadre should feast on which deal, some real good has been done; Transnet even seems to be on the rise, Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s revelations are promising to unlock some gems and South Africa’s economic kingpin, Thabo Mbeki, has finally found some guts to start saying some things.
Amid the chaos, some things are improving
The weather is perfect for sowing the seeds of ideas that may be great for the country and good for the fiscus, even if they aren’t politically popular.
In a country where a small minority are being squeezed for funding, it’s difficult to make financially prudent decisions. But since that money isn’t getting to the people it’s supposed to, it makes it somewhat easier.
Add to that the warring internal factions and it shouldn’t be surprising that as the castle of patronage comes down, a couple of things can be improved with the resources.
A minister who seemingly gets this and has largely kept a calm demeanor throughout the GNU is Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) Velenkosini Hlabisa. During lockdown, we learned just how much power Cogta has and Hlabisa has been wielding it pretty impressively.
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Halbisa takes on municipal functionality
On natural disaster management, he’s done the unthinkable in South African terms; enhancing the implementation of a 10-year-old framework. It shouldn’t be impressive, but since we tend to have a kink of jumping from one policy to the next, doubling down and anchoring a belief in a policy’s execution is quite a brave and functional thing.
When last have you heard a minister insistent on implementing the plan of a predecessor and making it work?
Hlabisa genuinely seems to want to do what’s good for the people and when it comes to preventing them from dying, that’s quite nice. I’m not sure if it’s because nobody knows how to get in his way or whether it’s just not profitable to impose themselves on him, the minister has been given some room to manoeuvre and it appears he knows this.
It shouldn’t be surprising that he’s taken on what is probably going to be the most difficult reform of this administration; municipal functionality. Ten years ago, you wouldn’t dream of anybody in Jacob Zuma’s cabinet thinking of claiming that the national government is bloated, let alone municipalities.
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Now, the minister is having a right go at the state of municipal affairs and fairly so. It’s not like John Steenhuisen is going to criticise anybody’s literacy because it will come off poorly, but the way Hlabisa puts it makes it pragmatic in the eyes of the public.
“You can’t monitor billions if you can’t read,” he said. Why on earth we’re even in a position where he’s got to say that is beyond me, but thank goodness somebody has finally said it.
What’s most exciting about this shake up is that it’s clearly a long term investment and he’s set milestones allowing him to take his time on the matter. It shows a degree of seriousness rather than politricking and perhaps we don’t see the results in his lifetime.
It feels so good to hear a minister commit themselves to a long term solution to an issue that nobody has really tried to address in 30 years. There’s a saying about great men planting trees and I really hope this one grows. We could do with the shade.
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