All we see is hypocrisy from the opposition
25 February 2021
The ANC as a vehicle for people’s emancipation has never been obsessed with what happens in the internal affairs of other political parties, but it would appear that other political parties have defined themselves and tried to find relevance for themselves within the South African body politic by portraying themselves as the antithesis to the ANC, a reactive and reactionary political posture that leaves them with an existential crisis outside of ANC-bashing and peeping across the wall to see what is happening next door.
When they’ve been given the opportunity to govern, as we have seen with the collapsed DA-EFF arrangements in Tshwane and Johannesburg, they have done nothing but bring about omnishambles to governance and service delivery, with unsustainable, populist policies to boot. Post 2016 local government elections, the City of Tshwane experienced serious governance challenges, with the irregular appointment of a City Manager and Chief of Staff in the former mayor’s office, allegations of widespread corruption and a string of unacceptable, unjustifiable and unreasonable walkouts and disruptions by Councillors during Council meetings. Council has executive and legislative authority and these constant disruptions led to a total collapse of governance and institutional decay as well as instability.
In fact, by the time provincial government intervened and placed the municipality under administration, Tshwane had no mayoral committee, no City Manager appointed and Council was repeatedly failing to sit and execute its governance and legislative responsibilities. It was a rotten state of affairs, to paraphrase the words from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Basic services such as waste collection, provision of water as evidenced by the SA Human Rights Commission report on the Hammanskraal water crisis, had completely collapsed. In some instances, communities went for months without provision of a basic service such as water.
The most expensive scandal in the history of local government, the multi-billion-rand Glad Africa scandal, happened under the watch of the DA-EFF coalition. Other multi-billion rand scandals such as the irregular appointment of Aurecon also plagued the DA-EFF coalition in Tshwane, coupled with the loss of R1.6 billion to Peu, who were appointed in 2018, the irregular fuel tender also in the billions, the widely reported crisis at Wonderboom that included corruption and maladministration, irregular expenditure which amounted to R5 billion by June 2019 and billions wasted in Unauthorised Irregular, Fruitless and Wasteful Expenditure totaling roughly R6.9 billion
In the City of Johannesburg, led by a DA-EFF coalition under former Mayor Herman Mashaba, who ironically is now running his own party, under a clean governance and anyone but ANC banner, corruption and maladministration was rife, as evidenced by the corruption around the multi-billion rand fleet contract, a multimillion-rand conflict-of-interest scandal against Mashaba over claims he influenced the funding of an NGO that he chaired for years. (Field Band Foundation, which Mashaba chaired for more than 10 years, received an R11million three-year contract beginning in December 2017, apparently after a recommendation from the former mayor to the city's social development department.) and a finding by the Public Protector that the former mayor irregularly appointed the former Johannesburg Metro Police chief, even though he did not meet the minimum requirements set out in the advert. The Public Protector found that former Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba was guilty of contravening supply chain management policies, conflict of interest and making irregular appointments.
On top of all this, the DA-EFF coalition that governed these two metros in Gauteng, introduced a whole range of unsustainable populist policies that led to burgeoning informal settlements in Tshwane and Johannesburg(compare the number of informal settlements that mushroomed in Tshwane and Johannesburg post 2016, to the ANC-led municipality in Ekurhuleni for example) and to unbudgeted in-sourcing arrangements, which though publicly celebrated as successes of the DA-EFF coalition, were done irregularly and it was left to the ANC-led administration which took over after them in Johannesburg for example, to regularise those appointments, in line with all the precepts of local government.
The opposition are good at ANC-bashing, but when it comes to their own governance record, they have been found wanting and exposed for the empty vessels that they truly are. Even in the much talked about “paragon of virtue and ethical, clean governance”, the Western Cape, we find that our opposition speaks with a forked tongue.
Of course life remains hunky dory for citizens of the Western Cape who live in suburbia, on the wine estates and fancy garden route destinations, but for the impoverished black majority of the Western Cape, which the DA cares nothing about, life remains nothing more than a daily struggle as second class citizens, as so profoundly captured by a statement recently released by Reclaim the City and the NGO NdifunaUkwazi, when they said the following, “poor and working class families, who are predominantly black and coloured, continue to experience an apartheid city, where access to land is reserved for a few and the local authority’s inability to address the deepening crisis of spatial inequality preserves the segregationist status quo.”
Juxtapose this sad reality in the Western Cape, with our spatial transformation agenda for Gauteng City Region, as evidenced by our mega human settlements projects, township formalisation and informal settlement upgrading programme and our ground-breaking, innovative rapid land release programme.
The DA in the Western Cape has a complete disregard for the township economy. They will be spending R32.4 billion over the medium term to boost economic growth and create jobs; with no well set out plans for direct investment in the township economy. Contrast that with the Gauteng provincial government’s Township Economy Revitalisation strategy, through which the provincial government increased its spend on township enterprises to roughly R22 billion at the end of the fifth administration, a figure which is geared to grow astronomically during the current term, especially with the introduction of the Township Economic Development Bill, which will take the Township Economy Revitalisation programme to the next level.
The DA often speaks out against the evils of cadre deployment within ANC-led administrations, but in the Western Cape, their governance record is littered with irregular appointments, cronyism and favours for friends. A case in point, is that on On 18 May 2018, the former provincial chairperson of the DA, Anton Bredell, who was and still is the MEC for local government, wrote a letter, on a DA letterhead, instructing the acting mayor, speaker, chief whip and DA caucus chairperson of George municipality to halt the appointment of the director of corporate services in the municipality.
For this action, the MEC was found to have been in breach of the ethics code. On closer inspection, what happened was more than an ethics breach, but a typical DA exercise of defending and advancing white privilege. The one applicant, who had been acting in the post, a black person, was the most qualified and suitable candidate, but the DA intervened through the MEC of local government, to block the appointment of the more qualified black candidate in favour of a white candidate of lesser capacity. In another municipality, Langeberg, they appointed a Municipal Manager with a questionable record, who left Midvaal municipality in Gauteng under a cloud, having been suspended by the municipality for a “jobs for sale” scandal, as reported by the Executive Mayor of Midvaal. He resigned whilst investigations were ongoing, only to turn up as a municipal manager in Langeberg.
When the Auditor General made quite damning findings against the Western Cape Education Department, as another example, instead of addressing those issues, the DA went on the defensive and tried to accuse the Auditor General of unfairly targeting the Western Cape government, only to be reminded by the Auditor General that there is only one standard for all provinces and they were falling short. So again, the DA seemingly only accepts the impartiality of the Auditor General’s findings when it suits them and when it doesn’t, they seek to shift the goal posts.
These are just a few of many examples. When the DA Premier in the Western Cape was called upon to remove his MEC of local government who interferes in the appointment of municipal staff, in line with his electoral promise to act without fear or favour against any MECs who transgressed the code of conduct, he merely gave him a minor slap on the wrist. It would appear that the DA seems to have one set of rules for itself where it governs and then a completely different set of ethical and moral standards for the ANC where it is in opposition. It’s OK for the DA to flaunt the rules and blur the line between party and state, whilst pointing fingers at others.
Unlike the opposition, who major on ANC-bashing, in Gauteng, we have a plan to bring about economic recovery, with an infrastructure-driven programme, with special economic zones(SEZs) in places such as the one around OR Tambo International Airport, in Tshwane with the automotive SEZ and in the Vaal. We have concrete plans to modernise and improve governance systems and processes for better service delivery impact, in light of Covid-19. We are not obsessed with what the opposition is or isn’t doing, but with materially and qualitatively improving the lives of the people of Gauteng.
Lest we be accused of falling prey to the same fault that we accuse the opposition of, we only highlight these inconsistencies to show that the opposition are like a road sign, with their ANC-centric, wedge-driving politics. A road sign can point the way to a destination, but it itself can never go there and it can never physically take you there. We highlight the inconsistencies of the opposition to show that they have no tangible solutions to the problems we are faced with, apart from ANC bashing. We remain the best hope for the betterment of the lives of the people of Gauteng as we forge ahead with our progressive developmental agenda.
Lebogang Maile MPL is the Gauteng MEC for Human Settlements, Urban Planning, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. This is an edited version of a speech he gave at the Gauteng SOPA debate at the Gauteng Legislature on the 25th of February 2021.
