DEAR Editor,-
Revolutionary existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote that ‘One always dies too soon or too late. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.’ These words perform several functions in the context of the death of Ugu District Municipal Mayor Cllr Tolomane Mnyayiza. Firstly, they emphasise the unpredictability and unavoidability of death as we are all born to die. His death means that he lived his life fully.
Secondly, these words inspire the living, especially those he led the ANC and Ugu Municipality with, to view death as a moment to appreciate and reflect on the life of the deceased in order to improve the lives of the people. His death is a question: Have you lived your life in a way that’s meaningful to the community, the ANC and a transforming South Africa?
For Cllr Mnyayiza, ANC membership and associated political leadership was never a privilege to self-enrich, but a public responsibility to work for and with the people in the struggle for a national democratic society, building a responsive developmental state and to deracialise and democratise the apartheid economy. Therefore those he led with and remain have big questions to answer.
1 If Cllr Mnyayiza represented party unity and discipline, are the remaining leaders committed to anti-factionalism by putting the ANC and the people, not tenders, first? Cllr Mnyayiza was thoroughbred cadre, not a com-tsotsi, nor a political turncoat.
2 If political maturity and integrity and peace defined Cllr Mnyayiza, will all machinations and mortal combat for leadership positions stop in his honour? Who benefits from the deaths of comrades? How does one sleep at night and still pledge allegiance to the ANC when one has robbed it of a comrade? When comrades find ways to eliminate each other, political mortality replaces political solidarity and political regression results.
3 If Cllr Mnyayiza clearly understood the state-party separation, the importance of a professionalised bureaucracy and effective and honest leadership in local government, will Ugu District Municipality be led in a manner that is solution-driven, worker-friendly and pro-effective service delivery as he had shown Ugu employees in his short-lived mayorship?
4 Was the Ugu Troika a cohesive and supportive unit? If not, why not? If yes, what explains the perception (by employees) of fissures and lack of teamwork at the top? These are urgent questions rather than talking about how long the mayor had been ill. Any more talk about what-illness is to prey on the dead and reduce and downgrade the political legacy of the mayor. The only illness worth talking about is the political cancer that afflicts local politics. Cllr Mnyayiza lived ANC and led the ANC, therefore his legacy must live on and lead us into a better future.
5 Will the municipality be managed in a manner that improves staff morale where all employees are valued? Will management disentangle itself from allegedly doing business with the municipality? In his honour, government employees, top-down, must know the difference between business and politics, the politics of business, the business of politics and must strive to never mix the two to avoid being captured and conflicted at the expense of the people who vote for the ANC government to eradicate the apartheid legacy. Some enter politics to become millionaires. Not Cllr Mnyayiza.
He had a single agenda – to serve the people through the ANC. So as we recover from his demise, let’s renew the ANC and local government in the region to serve no double agenda, but an agenda to transform communities for the better.
He was an ANC policy wonk and a strict disciplinarian who prized hard work and instilled that ethic on all, especially the youth. Before his death he had been working on 1) a comprehensive civic engagement programme for the district intended to implement the party’s election manifesto, and, 2) a Mayoral STEM Intervention Project designed to contribute and improve educational outcomes in science, technology, engineering and mathematics in schools across Ugu.
Cllr Mnyayiza understood the imperative of balancing the ‘hard power’ of government to deliver physical infrastructure and its ‘soft power’ of connecting people as social beings and cultivating progressive values of citizenship. That’s why he was working on a plan to mobilise resources for a youth and community development centre to harness talent and nurture dreams and capabilities of the youth.
Thanks for the smiles, the lessons, the reprimands and intellectualism. Your laughter was humane and special because it had no hidden agenda – especially the laughter we shared on August 3, when I accompanied you to vote.
Hamba Kahle Mayor, our stalwart. You left big gentlemanly shoes which can only be filled by a rare-breed cadre like you were.
NDABA MZELEMU
Bhobhoyi
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