SA’s love for victory, but at what cost?

We Springbok supporters have difficulty agreeing with the adage, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”

Sometimes, it matters whether you win or lose. Even if you play dreadfully for 77 minutes, all will be forgiven if you emerge victorious when the final whistle blows three minutes later.

It matters to us as a nation because winning at sport spreads good cheer and offers glimmers of hope. We need positive vibes.

Yet “how you play the game” remains important. Even in the often-brutal game of rugby, rules must be followed.

End don’t justify the means

In many spheres it’s not true that the end justifies the means, or that an outcome which you regard as favourable sweeps away questions about how the result was achieved.

For example, some think that because people are enjoying padel courts and the accompanying restaurants, we should not worry about how these came about.

We should worry because rules were not followed, to the detriment of Johannesburg ratepayers. The processes by which these arrangements were made violate the Local Government: Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) 56 of 2003, and the scheduled Municipal Public-Private Partnership Regulations (2005).

The most blatant violation in agreements involving the same people in different cityowned properties is lack of public participation. There isn’t space to list all the MFMA violations perpetrated by city officials, particularly by Joburg Property Company (JPC) and Joburg City Parks & Zoo (JCPZ) officials.

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Here are a few: Section 120 (6) (b) (i) of the MFMA says the city manager must, “make public particulars of the proposed public-private partnership…; and

“(ii) invite the local community and other interested persons to submit to the municipality comments or representations in respect of the proposed public-private partnership…”

There are multiple instances in Johannesburg where these stipulations governing public participation – and similar requirements in Section 33 of the MFMA – have been overlooked.

Section 6 (1) of the Municipal Public-Private Partnership Regulations says: “Only the accounting officer of a municipality may sign a public-private partnership agreement on behalf of the municipality.”

Section 10 of the regulations says: “No municipal entity may initiate, procure or enter into a public-private partnership agreement on its own or on behalf of its parent municipality …”

Bypassing the law

In Johannesburg, the accounting officer is the city manager. The parent municipality is the City of Joburg. Yet there are public-private partnership agreements concluded between private businesses and the JCPZ that purport to permit private parties to use municipal property for their own commercial purposes in the form of padel courts hired out at R500/hour.

These agreements are signed not by the city manager on behalf of the City of Joburg, but instead by senior people at JCPZ, who have no legal authority to do so.

Fortunately, communities are becoming aware of these attempts to bypass the law, excluding them from what should be transparent public processes. Multiple legal cases are loading, involving different properties.

Local communities have grown weary of observing their rights trampled upon. They are challenging these decisions in court.

Win or lose, city officials may learn that how you play the game is important in the end.

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