Our politicians often bombard us with fashionable new lines about how they intend tackling corruption, crime, et cetera. Each year they tell us it’s “all hands on deck and business unusual, ke nako” — their routine, important-sounding clarion call on our consciences.
But most of us know by now that it means bugger all. As a country we continue to make no impact whatsoever on poverty, and unemployment and inequality continue to increase.
The beginning of this year has seen us again subjected to such sloganeering.
But once in a while our rulers pull off a surprise: President Jacob Zuma’s January 8 statement announced that the ANC wants to depoliticise local government by preventing municipal workers from being office bearers in political parties. This would be a bold and long-overdue move if it is pulled off.
In his speech Zuma said: “We are of the firm view that municipal employees should not hold officials’ positions in political parties; and we will tighten our deployment procedures to ensure that we deploy comrades with political integrity and professional competence.”
For me this would mark the moment when the ruling party finally came to grips with what’s wrong in local government. I don’t know how in the long term it will change our political landscape. But I do know what it will achieve in the short term: it will break the culture of impunity and entitlement that many who are local heavyweights in the ANC and alliance partners exercise at their workplaces in our municipalities across the country.
In the first place some of the comrades who force their way on to municipal payrolls are simply unemployable outside of those government structures because they are either unskilled or are not prepared for the hard slog required in private companies.
But once ensconced in those safe jobs many refuse to take instructions from their seniors who are old-fashioned bureaucrats and not into politics. The politicisation of our municipalities has meant that many senior managers redraw their work descriptions in accordance with what they term “ANC priorities”.
It happens repeatedly that municipal managers who are senior in the ANC to the mayor and the executive refuse to take their instructions and instead seek to define what the “ANC priorities” should be. How does the mayor discipline the municipal manager in these instances?
Our local government is in a total shambles and, regardless of countless interventions and innovations by government since 1994, it remains mostly unworkable.
This is partly because we have pruned the sides and failed to confront the central problem.
But if we face up to the people in our municipalities who continually bring in more of their similarly unskilled chommies to bloat often nonviable local councils, we will be starting to chip away at what’s wrong with local government.
It’s all so rotten and explains why we should not rest on our laurels, even in this ominous quiet before the clap of thunder that is service delivery rumbles again soon.
I think government must act and act resolutely. But it must know that it will not be met with kisses and hugs if it does so. Already the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) has made it clear that it will resist this decision.
“A firm resolution was taken at the Samwu NEC meeting to engage the ANC’s national officials, offering the ANC an opportunity to clarify or apologise for the comments made on the occasion of the 98th anniversary of the ANC,” the union said in a statement. “The comments that were made are constitutionally and politically unnecessary. The ANC cannot tamper with the freedom of association we are guaranteed as South Africans and municipal employees.”
But I think Samwu should not cry “liberal rights” as if it were the Democratic Alliance.
This is not a narrow matter about preventing the union’s members from joining or voting for parties of their choice.
Samwu must re-examine its role in contributing to a local government that functions and delivers to its people. It must be honest with itself by asking whether it is comfortable with the cronyism and corruption that lead to the awarding of tenders to political associates whose shoddy workmanship in building faulty RDP houses and weak public infrastructure affects us all.
It would be a pity if trade unions chose to read Zuma’s resolve as a clampdown on trade unionism. Rather, union leaders should ask themselves whether they want to play a role in tackling the lack of accountability, laziness and impunity that are all crippling service delivery.