Rewind the clock back to the first three months of 1994 when the ANC was drawing up its list of candidates for the historic first democratic elections.
If you can, you will recall some unusual names in the initial lists for proposed ANC legislators — such as businessmen Sam Motsuenyane and Richard Maponya, academics Njabulo Ndebele and Jacklyn Cock, actor John Kani and athlete Bruce Fordyce. Such names took us by surprise, although in the event many of them chose not take up the offer.
But the magnanimity of the ANC leadership, their openness, their commitment to reaching out and attracting the best, and the goodwill that informed such gestures were inspirational and are indelible in our minds.
One can only look back in nostalgia, considering the calibre of the leaders we are stuck with at present in local government. This includes the likes of Balfour mayor Lefty Tsotetsi, who stayed home while his township burned as residents protested against lack of basic services.
Tsotetsi told the Mail & Guardian then that it was because he had a stomach bug. But he told President Jacob Zuma, who recalled him from home, a different story, saying that he was suffering from flu.
Zuma was not convinced and later told a radio station that Tsotetsi did not look like someone who had flu. He used him and his municipality as an example of where leaders were failing communities.
Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka also discovered on investigation that residents had a legitimate reason to be angry with government: they had sent several letters detailing grievances to the provincial government, which were ignored.
But I think analysts and the opposition parties make a mistake when they ignore the rot at local government level and rush to conclude that the protests are aimed at challenging Zuma on the promises he made pre-election.
Even though some of the issues at the heart of the dissatisfaction include housing, which is a national competency, the anger is often directed more at local councillors who simply don’t care.
The cavalier attitude displayed by these officials is in total contrast with what the party preaches after its national conferences, national executive committee meetings and special conferences.
Who can forget the well-articulated principles and desires of the movement in the document Through the Eye of the Needle, adopted in 1998 after a national general council meeting?
In its assessment of the state of governance in the North West, which was presented to the national executive committee meeting last month, the party concluded that local government has become dysfunctional in many of the municipalities.
“Business interests, control of resources and patronage [are] seen as being central to the divisions in the province,” the assessment stated.
This observation probably applies to almost any other province and is what the ANC leadership has decried at every major gathering over the past 10 years.
The party has long recognised deployment as central to internal divisions and a debilitating factor in the functionality of not only municipalities but provincial government as well.
In fact, the following precise assessment of the North West situation should be instructive nationally: “The appointment of managers in the municipalities is centralised in the office of the provincial secretary, thereby making it a norm that incompetent but loyal individuals to the dominant faction get appointed to all strategic positions.”
To be generous, it is heartening that the party has actually diagnosed this problem; in covering North West politics, our reporters have also repeatedly identified this. And in this one paragraph the party has summed up why we consistently have service-delivery uprisings.
A situation that best exemplifies this assessment is what is taking place in Ekurhuleni, in eastern Gauteng. Two weeks ago Ekurhuleni mayor Lentheng “Ntombi” Mekgwe appointed Hlula Msimang as metro police chief. Msimang even received an appointment letter.
But last week the office of the ANC provincial secretary phoned Msimang and told him not to report for duty. This was apparently because of some internal Ekurhuleni battles involving the Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association, the ANC Youth League and some trade unions that the province is trying to mediate.
But why should the ANC in the province be meddling with appointments of internal municipal managers? I can well understand why the party would want to have a say in the appointment of the mayor, but should the party be interfering with her duties and appointing staff on her behalf?
I don’t know this Msimang from a bar of soap, but can you imagine the farce that is about to take place with the MK vets overruling the mayor and “appointing” a candidate of their choice? It is appalling in the extreme.
These developments on the East Rand explain why, despite repeated efforts by the party’s national leaders to “crack down on municipalities, to conduct a skills audit and to throw money into local government”, most of our population in the townships remain without housing, water and electricity, and are burning tyres on the streets in a desperate effort to draw media attention to their suffering. And it is suffering you will see if you go to the nearest informal settlement.