Taps run dry, streets flood with sewage, and citizens suffer. Joburg needs leaders who deliver—not empty political ideals.
One of the most interesting newspaper opinion pieces I have read in a while was authored by outspoken left-leaning political analyst and former trade unionist Ebrahim Harvey in the Sunday Times.
He wrote that, while he abhors much of what the DA stands for and has criticisms in particular of its federal chair, Helen Zille, “I wholeheartedly support her for the crucially important position of mayor of Johannesburg”.
In a later letter to the paper, he lamented the stick he had taken from some comrades who clearly think he either lost his mind, or sold out to capital.
Yet, he was ahead of the tide… because even President Cyril Ramaphosa made the extraordinary public admission that he is hurt deeply by the fact that it is DA municipalities which are the best run in the country.
He went as far as saying ANC councillors should look to these DA-run cities and town to see how things should be done.
Afterwards, Zille herself – always alive to a propaganda opportunity – posted a cartoon of Ramaphosa running… in a DA shirt.
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The ANC has acknowledged the elephant in the room – the reason for the slow-motion collapse of most of our towns and cities (which are ANC or coalition-governed) is the incompetence and corruption of the cadres the party deployed to them.
This is the sort of pork barrel politics which the ANC has ignored for decades, as it pats itself on the back about being in the vanguard of the “National Democratic Revolution”.
People don’t care about whether you think you are Vladimir Lenin Lite – or even whether you are taking the fight to the capitalists and the imperialists.
They care that when they the turn on the taps in their shoebox houses, nothing comes out.
They care that they must then wait days for the water tankers to arrive. They care that when they venture into their unpaved township streets, they have to leapfrog over rivers of sewage.
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Ordinary people probably don’t even care about Grand Looting – where millions and billions of taxpayer money is squirrelled away in private bank accounts by the ANC comrades.
It is remote from them… save for when the lights go out because Eskom has been captured.
What really makes people angry and propels them to burn tyres and block roads is the lack of basic service delivery.
That is glaringly apparent in areas where the ANC rules.
This is the real reason why the ANC got such a klap in last year’s general election.
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And that is why Ramaphosa was at such pains to try and rally the councillor troops this week.
I am no great fan of Zille, nor some of the clowns who inhabit the DA, but councillors in that party have a commitment to the residents they represent and help sort out myriad problems at street level.
Zille takes no prisoners and, even though she realises it is going to take just short of a miracle to save Johannesburg, she is the only person I can see who has the ability to pull it off.
Many others, like Harvey, are well aware of that, too.
And at the municipal ballot box, voters could send the ANC the sort of shock message they have been desperately trying to dodge.
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After all, what good are fine political principles when you start stinking because you cannot have a hot shower?
