The Big Read: Every Day is for the Thief

The headlines are dominated by the usual suspects: President Jacob Zuma allegedly receiving kickbacks from French arms company Thales and walk-outs over the president's R246-million Nkandla house.

Zuma is an exhausting man. His name reminds me of the title of Teju Cole's book, Every Day is for the Thief. Every day brings a new scandal around the president. The stench around him is overwhelming. Now it is possible that yet another scandal - a nuclear power deal with Russia - will envelop him. He seems to thrive as the stench around him swirls.

When one manages to make one's way through the litany of scandals surrounding Zuma, one finds that the real story of the week is the water crisis that has hit about 100 Gauteng suburbs and communities over the past two weeks.

Incredibly, after two weeks of unco-ordinated and incoherent action, on Saturday we heard from chairman of the portfolio committee on water and sanitation, Mlungisi Johnson, who said there is no water crisis in Gauteng.

"There is no water crisis in Gauteng and people must know that they will from now on get water," he said.

The man is talking nonsense because Rand Water said on the same day that water "should" be restored to all parts of Gauteng within two weeks.

This is the same Rand Water and City Power who did nothing for 10 months while one of four crucial water-supply systems in Gauteng operated without the standard requirement of having a functional back-up electricity transformer.

The Sunday Times reported yesterday that Mike Muller, a former director-general of Water Affairs and now a commissioner in the National Planning Commission, said: "It is an indictment not just of City Power but of Rand Water and Johannesburg Water, who needed to ensure that there are contingency plans in place to keep critical parts of the system working when something goes wrong."

Muller also said the emergency transformer needed to be checked weekly. It clearly was not.

Now, one might want to reflect on a few things in this whole sorry saga. First, one might want to think about the sheer inconvenience that ordinary people have suffered. In the meantime, the authorities seem to do nothing. One of the most extraordinary things I heard was a spokesman on 702 saying the crisis would be resolved "in one, maybe two days". He did not know. Worse, he had not even bothered to know.

The truth is that our government has for years ignored the absolute imperative of maintaining, upgrading and modernising our essential infrastructure.

Connect the dots: Eskom, is facing massive problems. Why? Our government refused to build new power stations. Now we have intermittent power supply and already this summer there will be further power outages.

The water system has not been maintained, upgraded and modernised. Now we have water cuts and shortages.

Take this further. The roads have massive potholes and many cannot take the strain of the traffic on our roads.

All these issues are inter-connected.

A government that wants to succeed makes sure that the roads work, that electricity supply is certain and that water supply is constant.

We are now failing on all three levels. If you are a private business, you now most probably have a generator because you cannot trust Eskom supply.

You probably have a borehole or a well because you cannot trust that water supply will be consistent. You probably use a private logistics company because the Post Office has collapsed.

And soon you will, like many places in South America, buy a helicopter to ferry your senior executives because the roads are falling apart.

Our government likes to talk about economic growth of five percent or more.

This is a pipe dream unless you can provide these essentials for a running economy. Right now, we seem to be going backwards rather than forwards on infrastructure development.

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has been punting the National Development Plan wherever he goes.

Key to the success of the NDP is the building of essential infrastructure.

Four months after he came into office, I hope he puts his shoulder to the wheel and gets the cabinet to move on the water, electricity and road infrastructure that needs to happen.

Talking about it doesn't cut it. We need to start building, and soon.

Infrastructure - coupled with education reforms so that we can produce quality pupils from government schools - is what South Africa needs.

If we dilly-dally any further water and electricity cuts will become normal occurences, and we will continue to slide backwards as a country.