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The Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council’s plan to rejuvenate the city is nothing more than a localised version of Gear in which privatisation is central, writes Ebrahim Harvey
The most tragic thing about the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council’s (GJMC) iGoli 2002 plan is that it is not only the council’s 29 000 employees who will be adversely affected by the privatisation drive. Many poor communities who rely on the provision of basic services – electricity, water, repairs, rubbish removal, sanitation and so on – will too.
What lies at the heart of the iGoli 2002 plan and the growing conflict it has engendered between the parties is one word: privatisation. The term “transformation” is misleading since it is understood to apply to fundamental change for the better and not to the impending consequences of privatisation: job losses, tariff increases and greater hardship.
As the biggest and most powerful city in South Africa and Africa, Johannesburg is very important for our future. We urgently need a plan to revive a city which has faced a growing crisis over the past few years. We need more efficient and effective delivery of services to communities. The unions, led by the South African Municipal Workers Union, and civics agree with this.
But the biggest problem right now, which threatens to worsen the crisis, is the iGoli 2002 plan which is pivoted on privatisation.
How can the city be turned around when it is a foregone conclusion, contrary to the denial by the council’s head of transformation lekgotla, Kenny Fihla, that privatisation will inevitably lead to cost- cutting measures such as retrenchments, and tariff increases, in order to ensure profitability. This is what has happened elsewhere in the world where municipal services have been privatised. What will make Johannesburg different?
While the services may become more efficient and effective, a consequence of greater capital and technology, it will be at costs increasingly out of the reach of most people who live in the GJMC townships, many of whom are already in arrears and struggling to pay current municipal rates. Add to that the widespread poverty and unemployment and it is very clear that iGoli 2002 is going to worsen the situation.
What will happen to all those who cannot afford to pay for these services? The inescapable logic of privatisation, which is driven not by satisfying the basic needs of people but by profits, means that these people will not get basic services because the current subsidies will fall away together with the provision of services by the municipality.
The claims by Fihla that unions and other stakeholders were adequately consulted just cannot be true. Fihla has gone further to claim that of the more than 300 organisations who attended the iGoli 2002 summit in August all, except for a few, endorsed the policy.
How can this be true when unions, civics, the South African Communist Party and others demonstrated their opposition to iGoli 2002 a few weeks ago? Fihla called the protesters “ignorant workers” who were manipulated by a few union leaders who had hidden political agendas. Rings a bell with our apartheid past, doesn’t it?
It is interesting to see how some former unionists, once they enjoy big salaries, bonuses and benefits in top managerial posts, become just like the bosses they fought against earlier.
Fihla, a former leading shop steward, and Makgane Thobejane, former general secretary of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union and now the GJMC’s labour relations specialist, are examples of this trend. Lets face it: money, and the promise of more, can work wonders in quickly changing militant leaders into arrogant bosses.
The suspension of councillor Trevor Ngwane has reinforced the demands of the opposition, has sinister implications for local government and is yet another stark reminder of how the African National Congress tends to deal with criticism and opposition from within its ranks. The ANC cannot bludgeon its way through legitimate opposition, both within and outside its ranks.
However, in the final analysis, Fihla is a cog in a big machine. He cannot do other than what he is doing. Having adopted it as policy the ANC must take political responsibility for iGoli 2002, its consequences and Fihla’s actions. iGoli 2002 is a localised and customised version of the government’s growth, employment and redistribution strategy (Gear), in which privatisation is central. That is why both Gear and iGoli 2002 have been welcomed by the World Bank.
Fihla’s denial that iGoli 2002 will lead to privatisation and retrenchments is misleading. He has stated earlier that privatisation will bring much-needed capital to relieve mounting debt. Besides, one of the main objectives of the Social Plan Fund which emerged from the Jobs Summit of 1998 was to make provision for municipalities affected by large-scale retrenchments. That in itself confirms that retrenchments will most likely occur.
How does the council reconcile its increasing emphasis on development and satisfying the basic needs of the disadvantaged while at the same time embarking on privatisation which is certainly going to undermine development and the capacity to satisfy those needs?
How will it improve service delivery and extend services to those who don’t have it when responsibility for this will be removed from the council and placed in the hands of private companies whose main concern will be a profitable return? There is no consistency between these declared objectives and privatisation. That is the most glaring problem.
The argument of Khehla Shubane of the Centre for Policy Studies in defence of Fihla, that iGoli 2002 will be beneficial to communities if the debate is taken out of the realm of ideological commitment, is nonsense.
Where has privatisation or the fight against it occurred on a strictly non- ideological basis? This is the same arguments the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have used over the years. It is an attempt to depoliticise the issues of privatisation and transformation. Every major policy decision, in the final analysis, has an ideological underpinning. That is the ABC of policy studies. Shubane must spell out what he means.
The citizens of Greater Johannesburg, if they wish to build and revitalise this city, and prevent it from going down the sewage tubes, are left with no alternative but to unite in opposing iGoli 2002. When satisfying the most basic needs of people is abdicated by the municipality and placed in the hands of capital for a profitable return, then clearly the time has come for affected communities to take a stand. This city belongs to all its citizens and not to the council or the ANC.
Ebrahim Harvey is a former member of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. He is currently a freelance writer