SA government needs to stop putting lipstick on pigs

As a child I really did not look forward to having visitors descend on our family home during the December holidays. Don’t get me wrong, while I looked forward to the once-a-year chicken from our beige electric frying pain, all the cleaning leading up to the day was enough to put me off all festivities.    

My grandparents did not spare the rod, and while I hated all the housework, I mopped, mowed, weeded and pruned with the fervency of a GNU minister from a small party. There were days when there was so much cleaning I would have to trek uphill to the landfill and empty the municipal bin a couple of times during the week. To my grandparents’ credit, the house was never actually dirty, if anything, it was spotless most of the time. It was just when we had visitors that the Brasso metal polish came out and the ornaments had to be shined, the gutters were repainted and a double portion of red Sunbeam polish was layered on the concrete windowsills.  

My grandfather took great pride in the upkeep of his home and garden, the grass was tended enough to make any greenskeeper blush with envy. His shoes also matched his lawn. Other than making him tea and sprinting to the general dealer to get his Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes, I was tasked with keeping his shoes clean. I would polish those Crockett and Jones two-tone brogues every evening under his watchful eye. To this day I can’t stand having or seeing someone with dirty shoes, it just doesn’t feel right. 

My grandmother also ran a tight ship. The mop was a luxury, my sisters and aunts had to scrub the front stoep by hand on makeshift knee pads every Saturday morning. The kitchen had to be clean, especially as this was the first place you saw when you entered the home, and this of course was where we slept. No dish had real estate on the kitchen counter for more than a few minutes. 

This was not a job to my family; it was a way of life. It was normal, this was their home, and they loved it and kept it clean, for them and not anyone else. 

The contradictions to my rosy upbringing only started to show as I travelled to school. My transport driver, who to this day I only know as Ubaba kaSiyabonga (Siyabonga’s Father) had to weave through piles of rubbish on the road. This was the late 1990s and early 2000s. By then one could see the decline, just not as bad as it is today.  

As I listened to President Cyril Ramaphosa wax lyrical about how we need to put our best foot forward for our G20 visitors I felt a deep betrayal of my grandparents. The notion that we are to only clean when we are expecting visitors is not something we should stand on podiums and feel proud saying, it’s putting lipstick on a pig, and if the Johannesburg inner-city were a pig, the brand of lipstick the ANC wants to apply should be rejected. We deserve better, we are better. 

Our leaders have for too long operated this way. I could go back and speak of other instances but allow me to call on one recent example. When the former governor and finance minister Tito Mboweni passed on on October 12 2024, it was not long after that government apparatus arose from their slumber and attempted to fix the roads in Nkowankowa and revive signage expecting visitors and government officials for his funeral. It seems they have lights and are capable of finishing things even if it means working through the night.

The Sunday Times’ Isaac Mahlangu reported on the patchwork and asked the locals what they thought of the activity and how they felt about the improvements. “We need to pray that another prominent person from Nkowankowa dies for us to get better service delivery.” This was business owner Noel Chauke being quoted. 

It’s a product of self-loathing and disrespect for the public that our leaders need to be shamed into doing the bare minimum. The standards our government sets for itself are so low it even rations service delivery. How were they OK saying they were going to fix the city but priority would be given to certain routes? 

It seems that for us to get somewhere with our government we need to pray for death and hope for visitors. For our leaders to stand on platforms and attempt to inspire collective embarrassment as a catalyst to provide services is shameful and a betrayal.