Jhb mayoralty: From the frying pan into the fire

Amos Masondo has announced he won't be back. This is a good thing. His tenure has been marked by maladministration and mismanagement on a spectacular scale. The people of Johannesburg deserve better.

But the ANC itself doesn't seem to think so.

The ANC seems to think the people of Johannesburg deserve worse - so senior structures in the ANC have endorsed Parks Tau as the party's mayoral candidate, the very person who, as the city's political head of finance, oversaw the city's ongoing billing fiasco.

Such a decision, if confirmed, would be to take Johannesburg out of the frying pan and casually discard it into the fire. It would also confirm that the ANC does not have the concerns of ordinary voters at heart; but rather the interests of those who would represent it.

Mr Tau, as head of city finance, is the ANC member directly responsible for Johannesburg's shambolic finances. The inability of Mr Tau's finance operation to correctly bill residents left many without water and electricity connections after the metro illegally disconnected them. This after Mr Tau's finance division presented them with outlandish bills amounting to tens of thousands of rands, amounts which people did not owe.

The result has been that thousands of citizens are outraged, and rightly so.

But before Mayor Masondo belatedly admitted the crisis, Mr Tau stubbornly refused to recognise any problems. In an interview he gave on 1 February this year on the billing crisis, he said, 'there is no crisis'. He also admitted to cutting off people's water supply and electricity (the former unconstitutional and the latter illegal). Furthermore, Mr Tau's approach to this crisis has been based largely on suspicion of ratepayers, and a failure to accept that the fault lies with the city management, and not the residents. Clearly, this is a man not in touch with the concerns of the people he represents.

But the billing crisis is only one aspect of the sad state of Johannesburg's finances. According to the latest figures available, Johannesburg has a total debt of R10,35 billion; 54% of its total revenue in 2009. According to the National Treasury it also has the fastest growing rate of debt of any metro in the country at 23% (R2 billion) a year. Despite this debt, it has a rate collection rate of just 85%. This is what Mr Tau has presided over. It raises serious questions about his effectiveness.

It is disappointing that the ANC continuously refuses to hold its elected officials to account for not doing their jobs. Parks Tau has consistently mismanaged Johannesburg's finances -  mismanagement which has directly affected peoples' lives. The people of Johannesburg deserve a mayor who will turn the city around and actually deliver services for all, not give them more of the same.

Statement issued by James Lorimer MP, Democratic Alliance Shadow Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, March 10 2011

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