JUSTICE MALALA | Joburg needs to work for the poor, not for G20 leaders

If it is true that the DA’s Helen Zille is an unrepentant racist and the political child of apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd, why are so many “upstanding” members of our political elite so scared of the possibility of her running for the “lowly” job of mayor of Johannesburg?

If she is indeed such a devil, then surely voters can and will see through her tricks and reject her at the polls?

Since news broke that Zille might throw her hat in the ring for the job, we have been inundated with wagging fingers, with outraged commentary telling us just how terrible a person she is and how “black areas” will be starved of services and attention. We have been told that in the City of Joburg she will look after Sandton and neglect Alexandra township — and more of the same.

Please, it’s time to stop the hypocrisy. The argument that all Joburg must collapse and residents should be happy because “the white suburbs” do not have water just as “black townships” have no water is as misguided, and nauseating, as it is plain wrong.

A black woman sitting in Chiawelo, Soweto, with no running water and no electricity now has to be happy that a white woman in Sandton also does not have water and electricity. What winners we are! Now we are all suffering — we have achieved the equality we have been fighting for!

The City of Joburg is dying. The “world-class African city” is rotting from Lilian Ngoyi (formerly Bree) Street in the “city centre” right through to all the informal settlements that line the motorways out of the city into the hinterland.

There are the obvious signs in and around the city: the uncollected rubbish lining the streets, the street lights that don’t work, the hundreds of metro cops taking bribes along the city streets while private-sector employees direct the traffic, the dilapidated buildings, the potholes that don’t get fixed ... What used to be the continent’s most admired infrastructure is tatty, neglected and collapsing.

Then go out into the townships and informal settlements: the rubbish heaps, the neglected roads, the dark houses without electricity, the homes that have no running water.

But get inside the homes of what those who have blasted Zille’s candidacy call the “white suburbs”, ignoring the huge numbers of black South Africans who live there. I spent April and May largely in my old neighbourhood, Parkview, and it makes you want to cry. Water does not run for large swathes of the area between 5am and 10pm or later. Sometimes there is only running water for a couple of hours in a 24-hour cycle. Electricity, which is allegedly back consistently, is available at the whim of the authorities. At the iconic Zoo Lake, piles of rubbish often line the edges.

The priority should be to make the city of Joburg work — in its billing, in its waste collection, in its bylaw enforcement — for the people of Soweto, not the rich of the G20

I point this area out because that is the area which President Cyril Ramaphosa knows and travels all the time from his home in Hyde Park to the ANC head office in the city centre. In March even the diplomatic Ramaphosa had to pipe up and say the city is collapsing.

In this race-charged debate about Zille, the real crisis — the crisis of poverty and death that is being experienced by black people who are being starved by the corruption and inability to govern of the current administration — is forgotten.

The fact of the matter here is that the ANC, from Ramaphosa to Joburg mayor Dada Morero, have no vision for the city. They have no plan except the immediate.

When Ramaphosa finally stated the obvious in March that the city is collapsing, he exposed his party’s unsuitability to run Joburg by saying it was important for the city to improve to create a good impression for global leaders visiting for the G20 summit.

“As South Africans we are proud people. Let us get that self-pride that we have to lift us up, so that we do present a G20 that will wow people, so that when people look at what we offer and present, they must just say, ‘Wow! This is how South Africans do it!” he said.

That is heartbreaking. If Ramaphosa was serious, he would have known, and have said, Joburg needs to run well for the poor of Chiawelo, where he was raised and where there is consistently no electricity, instead of having nice roads for the G20 summit and western leaders.

Morero showed that the myopia runs throughout the ANC. “We’ve prioritised certain routes within Johannesburg which are G20 routes to ensure we make them the standard they should be: no potholes, no traffic signals that aren’t working,” he said.

It makes you want to die of embarrassment. The priority should be to make the city of Joburg work — in its billing, in its waste collection, in its bylaw enforcement — for the people of Soweto, not the rich of the G20.

If Zille is the person who can do these things, then please, please, bring her to the city immediately.