Uncertainty, at times, spawns inventiveness. It creates discomfort that forces us into action. Part of the reason our country is in the mess it is in now, is because those in power, the ANC, have always thought of themselves possessed of the right to rule.
With each passing election, the question was never which political party will win. It was by what margin. This level of certainty or comfort gifted us our myriad challenges.
The budget speech by Gauteng finance MEC Jacob Mamabolo this week shows that premier Panyaza Lesufi and his comrades are involved in a life and death fight, literally and figuratively.
Mamabolo announced that Gauteng almost doubled (97%) its budget allocation (R2.7bn from R1.3bn) to fund the community safety department, which is set to implement Lesufi’s hi-tech plan to fight crime in the province.
Lesufi enthralled many and was ridiculed by some when he said his administration would give residents panic buttons linked to a command centre that would ensure a speedy response to people in distress. He said Gauteng will purchase cars, drones (with capability to detect the direction from which bullets are fired), helicopters, CCTV cameras and 6,000 new police wardens to help fight crime. Fanciful, many said. Don’t blame me for having a vision, Lesufi responded.
As crime spiralled out of control and many residents felt under siege, Lesufi identified safety as the apex need for the country’s commercial capital. The question has been whether he would be able to turn the tide in just more than a year to the next general election.
Yesterday Lesufi, through Mamabolo, showed that he is prepared to stop doing what people consider normal — incremental budget increases — and simply fund what he believes will make a difference. And the 97% budget increase to the community safety department shows this is the message he wants to take to the streets when campaigning for re-election in 2024. There is something admirable about knowing what outcome you want and going all out to fund it and, hopefully, make a success of it. It is the sort of clarity of strategy the ruling party requires at the Union Buildings.
But the fact that the ANC has almost lost Gauteng is the motivation behind Lesufi’s bold pursuit. The uncertainty of office is forcing him to tell his comrades responsible for other departments to make do with cuts, which we don’t exactly see in other provinces or even from the national budget.
What is absent from Lesufi’s Agenda 2024, though, is how he is going to mobilise unemployed, mostly disillusioned township youth, to vote in Gauteng. Many simply want jobs.
When you look at Gauteng’s budget, it is clear a deliberate decision was taken to rob Peter — transport (-1%), health (-2%); human settlements (-3%) and others — to pay Paul, community safety (+97%) and education (+6%). The big statement being made here is that the police will either win this war on crime or be in the throes of such a battle by the time Lesufi asks residents to trust his administration for one more term.
For Lesufi’s sake, we must hope he has an answer for what we saw in Westbury, the rampant criminality, in the past two weeks. Otherwise, the 97% increase of this week will be pointless. We must hope, too, that whatever resources are being put together for crime fighting will not be for display or to be used to accompany him when arriving after the fact, a sport police minister Bheki Cele has mastered.
Cele arrived in Westbury in a cavalcade that was meant to be a show of force, with a helicopter hovering and boats to display other capabilities. The locals were correctly unimpressed. The helicopters should not be for showing off. They should be available to the local police each night the gangs of Westbury decide it is time to create a mini war against each other, with innocent people caught in the crossfire.
What is absent from Lesufi’s Agenda 2024, though, is how he is going to mobilise unemployed, mostly disillusioned, township youth to vote in Gauteng. Many simply want jobs. There’s no secret formula for creating employment. The economy is creaking to a halt. The situation is made worse by load-shedding as the economy contracted three times more than consensus forecast, the latest GDP numbers revealed this week.
For Lesufi, this means even if he succeeds in making Gauteng safe, the large army of unemployed people who have grown disinterested in politics will be somewhat safe but still not sufficiently encouraged to vote for him. Here, both the state of the province address and the budget speech by Mamabolo show Lesufi remains in the dark, as it were.
That said, Lesufi’s bid to make Gauteng safe, even if many will still be unemployed, is laudable. The countdown to the beginning of the new financial year (April 1), or the beginning of the end of the ANC rule in Gauteng, is firmly under way.
Through the budget, Lesufi is trying to show he will swing and not drown. But his bold move is courtesy of the uncertainty that lies around the corner. It is the discomfort that comes with whether he will still be premier, will the ANC be in office, or in the opposition benches in GP. Uncertainty has gifted us a premier ready to be bold, ready to die trying.
It is a thing to watch.
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