unfairly?
Craig Bishop
Eight months into perhaps the toughest provincial job in the country, Eastern Cape Premier, the Reverend Makhenkesi Stofile, is under pressure to take heavy-handed action to control fraud and deliver government services.
A recent Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) survey found he was the least popular premier in South Africa.
Stofile (50), a Presbyterian minister and sports administrator with a keen interest in rugby, is known as a tough, no-nonsense politician whose chief mandate has always been to crack down on corruption.
Some accuse him of being heavy-handed and arrogant qualities that served him well when he was African National Congress chief whip in the National Assembly. Others see him as much more in touch with the provinces problems than his predecessor, Raymond Mhlaba.
His response? I am not here to please anyone. I am not a film star. If in the course of my work I offend someone, so be it.
With the province collapsing around his ears, he is taking the flak for ANC failings in the province. Few politicians envy him.
The Eastern Cape is one of the poorest provinces in South Africa. It is estimated that it will need R3-billion a year to eradicate poverty.
A provincial audit, conducted by public service director-general, Paseka Ncholo, found no effective political and administrative leadership, with a lack of co-ordination and clarity of roles between different levels within the administration.
And according to a recent provincial welfare department report, the provinces pension fund faces bankruptcy before December, unless additional funding is found.
The report says almost 60% of the R2,4- billion pension budget had been consumed in the five months until the end of July. National government has insisted there will be no additional funds to provinces. More than 600 000 pensioners are facing a bleak Christmas.
Police are investigating over 650 cases of fraud and corruption in the Eastern Cape involving R31-million worth of public funds.
Stofile is awaiting the completion of a government staff audit into redundant personnel. The buck stops with him. He alone decides the fate of tens of thousands of civil servants inherited from the former Transkei and Ciskei administrations and the Cape Provincial Administration.
He points out that mass retrenchments would have a devastating impact on the economies of former Transkei boom towns, like Umtata and Butterworth.
People would need alternative means of survival, such as small-scale farming, to feed themselves, says Stofile.
The Pan Africanist Congresss shadow provincial secretary for public works, Waters Toboti, says this has already happened.
ANC leadership is becoming bourgeois. People are losing faith in the ability of the ANC to deliver in rural areas. The economy is already collapsing. In Butterworth we have lost 70 factories, in Umtata about 55 factories, and if this continues to happen, the chances for the PAC to take over the Transkei are bright.
Toboti points out that dissatisfaction with the ANC is projected on to Stofile, although the premier has had little chance to prove himself. Stofile is very new in office and has yet to show his reputed toughness.
Border Chamber of Business (BCOB) director, Peter Miles, says that Stofile should not have been included in the survey.
The survey took place as Stofile took office. He has impressed us at BCOB although it remains to be seen whether he can be the decision-maker that the province needs.
The time is fast approaching for him to start being heavy-handed, especially with the bloated civil service. He must realise that he cant be friends with all of the people all of the time.
Researcher Ian Hirschfeld from the HSRCs Centre for Socio-Political Analysis admits that the survey is a generalisation, but that national and provincial trends can be extrapolated from the data.
The survey reflects dissatisfaction with the office rather than the person. The provincial populace will tend to apportion blame for political party failings to the premiers office, Hirschfeld explains.
Eastern Cape Democratic Party leader, Eddie Trent, says Stofile has been unfairly judged for ANC failings. I have refrained from attacking him because it is too soon I would give him a bit more time to deliver. However he is not taking the sort of dynamic lead that we expected he could also be a little more visible to voters.
The survey has been slated by the premiers office for a number of inaccuracies, such as the fact that the research was done in February, when Stofile was new to the portfolio.
Another omission is to construe the performance ratings in the report as meaning popularity ratings. These are two different things, says Stofiles representative, Manelisa Wolela.
Stofile will need every shred of his undoubted toughness and political acumen to make necessary and unpopular decisions without alienating large sectors of the electorate Development Media Agency