How can the UIP team be trusted?

Your point is valid, if we want to get something done, we probably will need to join this project (Urban Improvement Project, Twobits, December 9). But you are not very clear on how this money will be spent.
When local authorities originated aeons ago it was obviously done because simple villages needed some common infrastructure such as connecting roads. And bodies were formed to coordinate this.
The key factor here was that everybody was visible, they all lived down your street. So there was accountability, nobody could hide. At some stage we had a fairly accountable set-up in this country. All towns had their own councils and the mayor was a visible guy who didn’t get a salary and neither did the councillors. But with political reform it was argued that greater municipalities will be more efficient as they will have shared resources and to a great extent, eliminate duplication.
What was not said was that the management of these resources would be moved out of reach of the public. So now we sit with a situation where it is illegal for a resident to not pay his rates, but it is somehow not a crime to withhold the service.
So what the Urban Improvement Precinct programme is actually doing or seems to be doing, is what I described in terms of the founding of original council or committees above. We are indirectly trying to recreate the efficient councils that we originally had and we need a tax base for it but with one difference: we are going to leave the parasitic, cancerous and inefficient political structures intact.
So my question is, how will this extra private tax be spent that is being soft-soaped as protection of  our investments? Who benefits because we know that even “not for profits” have paid people and I suppose the promoters of such a scheme also benefit? Can they be 100% trusted? Will all financial statements be published and be broken down to enough detail that we will know that it is not a carefully structured get rich scheme for some, with a little lollipop on the side to numb the minds of a naive and insecure public?
I am not convinced that the press do enough to critically look at the local councils to expose what they are doing to the public. To push an agenda like this with vigour and make such a strong case for it without actually exposing all of the fat cats and the line of accountability behind the original problem, amounts to nothing more than journalistic cowardice. It is exactly this lack of exposure  that has protected those behind the scenes that led to the recent collapse of the shopping mall in Tongaat.
Hindsight is such a convenient excuse, isn’t it? If we could actually have a not-for-profit organisation that would actually spend full time on exposing the fat corrupt cats and inefficiency and take them to court and all the bodies (including the press) that are supposed to deal with corruption in this country and also make sure they do their work right up to the Public Protector on a continuous basis, I would be much more motivated to pay something extra like this. But it is painful to pay another toll when you know a large sum of money that you pay every month is going through holes and there are laws in this country that obliges you to do so. I would also like to know what the motivation is of the promoters of this. I have seen a lot of strange things happening in this small town since I got there and I don’t necessarily believe that the noble ones that pose as our saviours are always that noble.
CHRIS KLEYNHANS
Sheffield
The difference here is that you can fire the UIP if they don’t deliver. The annual contract is the safety net – Editor. (Letter shortened).