It is one thing for a once-great organisation to lose its direction to careerists. It is quite another for it to fail repeatedly to respond to the mess it has made with any semblance of meaningful engagement.
The African National Congress leadership in the once-great city of Johannesburg and the country’s economic hub of Gauteng have managed to start their all-important local government election year on a tone-deaf note, not just once but twice.
In February, it was Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi who responded to the growing concerns of water shortages in Johannesburg by saying that he was also personally affected by the crisis and had to make arrangements to shower at hotels in the city.
Recently, DA Joburg mayoral candidate Helen Zille embarked on a shameless attention-seeking melodrama by recording herself having a swim in a large sinkhole in Douglasdale, after a burst pipe was neglected and filled up with rainwater.
Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero’s response to this was to draw even more attention to Zille’s theatrics, even as he donned a reflector jacket and took some time to tell the residents of the city that some sort of response was under way.
That sinkhole and the related burst pipe had been lying open for three years in the area, according to at least one Douglasdale resident who spoke to Sunday Times. The response to the sinkhole was not quite as “immediate” as the fragile coalition running Joburg would have residents believe.
Zille is not off the hook either. The City of Cape Town, which is run by her party, the DA, is surrendering the best of the city to expats from the Global North.
These are not just two examples of political leaders giving unartful responses to crises created by the organisation that they represent. It is the logical and inevitable conclusion of an organisation that has long abandoned any pretence of connection or sense of duty towards its base.
Zille is not off the hook either. The City of Cape Town, which is run by her party, the DA, is surrendering the best of the city to expats from the Global North. From housing to restaurants and even gyms, residents are being priced out of every facet of life by tourists.
Surveys by various research organisations point to benefits such as lower property prices and more disposable income for professionals as reasons for the semigration from Cape Town to Joburg, but it is hard to imagine that the plunder of good property by Airbnbs and similar short-term accommodation platforms helps either.
If the DA wins by an overwhelming mandate in Joburg this year, thanks to decades of governance failure by the ANC, Joburgers have no guarantee their city will not be rendered unaffordable by the property scrooges that are already ruining Cape Town.
But a political party that has spent decades turning the greatest city on the continent into a governance dumpster fire has no room, capacity or high ground to say anything to its political opponent, even if that opponent may come with service delivery and efficiency ― for rich, yuppie expats only.
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