What does Dada actually know about turning around a municipality, and where is the show of competency for it?
Johannesburg Skyline. Picture: iStock
There are eight metros in South Africa. Three of them are in Gauteng.
Perhaps using the dude who led the downward charge of one of them to oversee the turnarounds across the province isn’t the stroke of genius the comrades might believe it to be.
Since moving to Melville in January, I’m on cumulative day 42 without water. It begs the question: what does Dada know about municipal turnarounds?
He’s evidently very good at isolating the source of the problem as long as that source is Herman Mashaba, but unHermanning Johannesburg will take a little more than saying Herman is to blame.
Waiting too long to select candidates for municipalities that clearly need turning around is rather odd.
Surely, when you’re in charge and still need to turn a place around, you start thinking of who to deploy to do that.
Surely you don’t wait until five months before an election to thrust upon us some dude that only the 2015/6 SASCO leadership of Turfloop campus has ever heard of.
Fortunately, whoever they throw in need not be too concerned with coming up with a turnaround plan.
That’s because Mr Morero has been tasked internally by the ANC to undo the work of all the other municipalities in the province that have been destroyed by Herman Mashaba.
Remember the wreckage wrought by ol’ Herman when he was mayor of Marefong? Remember the scandal of Herman’s R7 billion Aerodrome project when he was mayor of Lesedi? And how could anybody forget that right after Herman became mayor of Emfuleni, he stopped all the waste removal, sparking the #EmfuleniMustFall protests.
Gosh! Herman Mashaba must have been mayor of every municipality in Gauteng, and clearly couldn’t get a single one right if we go by Dada-depicted data.
So fear not, incoming mayors who will know of their candidacy on the eve of the election! Cde Morero has your game plan set! Do what you like and then blame Herman.
If Dada were in the DA, you’d just know there would be an alliterative hashtag to go along with that plan: #HavockedByHerman.
What does Dada know?
But in order for Dada to go on instructing all the municipalities on how to undo all the negativity Herman Mashaba cast upon them in his tenure as super mayor of Gauteng, those municipalities would have to remain ANC-run.
This role as convener of the turnaround strategy is a party internal one. After all, it’s not like the Midvaal guy is going to be running to Dada for advice on how to turn around a municipality. Why not? Because Midvaal already sees itself as having turned around. It’s the DA Gauteng bragging case. Whether or not that is reality is another question, but they do cite some improved stats.
It raises the question: what does Dada actually know about turning around a municipality, and where is the show of competency for it?
What municipalities has Dada turned around? What municipalities has his party turned around? What municipalities have they prevented from requiring a turnaround? How many of these municipalities that need turning around are like that, thanks to other parties?
It’s quite odd to think that one has held power over several municipalities for decades, and when things go south, the plan is to blame a guy who was only ever in charge of one for all of three years.
I wonder if anybody believes that Johannesburg would have been a wonderful place if, instead of Herman, we had more time with those Al Jama-ah chaps.
Speaking of Al Jama-ah, at least they’ve announced their mayoral candidate. What have we heard from team Dada? Substantially little, but that’s forgivable since so many of them are being otherwise patriotic…in Mexico.
