Time will tell if Panyaza Lesufi is a liar or a rare turnaround specialist in our politics.
The Gauteng premier read the room correctly and, with his maiden state of the province address this week, appeared to give a last throw of the die for the ANC ahead of next year’s general elections.
Lesufi’s ANC barely scraped through the 50% mark in the past general election and is widely expected to either go into coalition or move to the opposition benches in 2024. As he addressed his potential voters on Monday, Lesufi correctly identified crime as the biggest challenge facing his administration.
“Let’s openly admit our province is a home of heartless and merciless criminals. They do as they wish. If this situation is left unattended, it will be the end of all of us,” said Lesufi.
Who would disagree with that? We may add that power outages make it even worse for individuals and businesses. But Lesufi knew exactly what to say. For someone aware of the many unfulfilled promises by the ANC, Lesufi not only made grand promises but gave us delivery dates.
From April 1, Lesufi promised, his administration would endow suburbs, townships, business districts, schools and other places with hi-tech, face and car recognition CCTV. About 180 state-of-the-art drones will be procured to infiltrate areas that are difficult to patrol or police. The budget for crime-fighting increases to R750m from April 1 as 400 new police vehicles are added to obviate the challenge of police not getting to crime scenes because of resource scarcity. In addition, 6,000 young people will be employed to monitor the streets. “We will unveil two new helicopters at the beginning of the next financial year [April] and add four additional helicopters within the 2023/24 budget cycle,” Lesufi said.
Of all the things Lesufi mentioned in his address, if he achieved those related to crime fighting only, Gauteng’s battered voters might still give him a chance. His biggest, though predictable, challenge is trust. He is not the first suave, promise-spitting politician to grace the halls of power since 1994. But he knows this too. This is why he started his address by saying Gauteng residents “think we talk too much and do less” before promising to “talk less and do more”.
“We are getting Gauteng back to work,” vowed Lesufi.
The problem for him is that getting Gauteng “back to work” presupposes Gauteng wasn’t always working for the good of its citizens. So the question is, on whose watch, according to the new sheriff, was Gauteng not working? Former premier David Makhura? Nomvula Mokonyane? Or Mathole Motshekga? In the end, they are his comrades. He worked and failed with them. If he knew how to turn around the situation all these years, why did he not make himself heard on his solutions? So it’s easy to dismiss Lesufi and his promises.
But the reason we won’t dismiss them outright is because he has given us deadlines to achieve his goals.
These give us an opportunity to call Lesufi out for lying well ahead of the next election. The astute politician Lesufi is, we know he knows we will do this. Hopefully he has his ducks in a row.
The countdown is well and truly under way. It is either we will, at great speed, have the country’s commercial hub, home to “heartless and merciless criminals”, transformed into a safe and secure province for increased economic activity, or have Lesufi voted out as a liar in a matter of months. We should all want him to succeed. If his turnaround plans fail, he too deserves the boot.
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