TOM EATON | Words like ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’ must have confused ANC’s mayors

Whoever decided that the collective noun for a group of mayors is a “magnificence” clearly hasn’t visited SA recently.

Indeed, as Cyril Ramaphosa addressed 100 mayors at the start of a two-day get-together in East London organised by the SA Local Government Association, it was hard not to think of that internet wit who once suggested that the collective noun for mayors should be a “chain gang”.

Ramaphosa certainly seemed to be thinking it, telling his audience that “the real capture is happening at local government level”, thanks to “councils being captured by criminals”, which I suppose is as elegant a description of the ANC winning local elections as any.

Of course, nobody in the ANC is able to say that the party is corrupt, and Ramaphosa couldn’t help painting a picture in which these criminals were physically separate from the councillors who were doing their bidding, often “sitting in the gallery among the audience” at council meetings and “waiting for their share”, as if they were exerting some kind of diabolical mind control over the poor, helpless councillors.

To be fair, this was pretty standard stuff. To the ANC, corruption is always something foisted upon innocent and honest revolutionaries, as if they’d just been going about their business and had suddenly been attacked by a mad scientist who’d stabbed them with a hypodermic containing a corruption virus. It is never a meeting of minds and lusts; of two equally bankrupt people agreeing to scratch each other’s dirty backs at the expense of society.

Where things got confusing for the ANC mayors in the room, however, was when Ramaphosa started using new and confusing words like “transparency” and “accountability”.

Where things got confusing for the ANC mayors in the room, however, was when Ramaphosa started using new and confusing words like ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’.

Why, they must have wondered, was the president talking about those plastic sheets their maths teacher used to put skew on the overhead projector and smear with blue ink? As for accountability: what did their ability to count have to do with anything?

In fact, why was the president talking about counting at all? Didn’t he know that counting causes nothing but stress? I mean, if people are going to start counting, next thing they’ll start adding numbers together, and before you know it, municipalities will be expected to balance their budgets and keep track of expenditure, and then what’s the point of even being in office?

Luckily they could reassure themselves that none of it meant anything. And as the meaningless words poured over them — “good governance”, “sound financial management”, “administrative capacity” — they could sit back, close their eyes and dream of getting back to their imploding fiefdoms, where nobody counts anything and nothing matters, except that next pay cheque and those telepathic messages beaming down into your head from the public gallery ...