Can Democratic Alliance stop the slide?

Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille. Does her party hold the key to a successful future for South Africa?

IN speaking truth to power, it is not just to the very powerful that we must look.

In reality, more power is often wielded by politicians at a local level. Consider, for instance, how during the Nazi occupation of Europe it was mean, evil apparatchiks at town, even village level, who were responsible for some of the most horrendous atrocities.

Similarly, during the Rwanda genocide, it took only one evil madman with political clout to turn an entire village into a gang of marauding murderers.

I’m not suggesting we in South Africa have reached that point yet, although the attacks on exiles a few years back suggests there is a thin veneer of respectability that can very easily be stripped away.

How to keep things together? How to ensure that the centre holds, and things don’t fall apart? That is the key issue, and it is ironic that in 2010 we have probably seen, at a seemingly trivial level, just ahead of the World Cup, very real signs of the ANC-run municipality in Port Elizabeth allowing things to simply run down.

It is as if they don’t have the will to do the basics right anymore. With a drought threatening the very existence of the city, there are regular reports of people informing the authorities about massively wasteful water leaks, and nothing gets done about it. For days, millions of litres of water are squandered.

We have had ongoing examples of our traffic officers failing to do their work. They are rarely seen – except when barricading freeways in protest over some or other pay dispute. Minibus taxis, whose drivers are rarely brought to book, have become a law unto themselves, breaking every rule of the road with impunity.

Streets with a story

Just some of the gutters in Port Elizabeth where leaves are accumulating. In many, weeds and grass have taken a foothold, as the municipality seems to have stopped caring about maintenance of our infrastructure.

Alfred Terrace in Central, Port Elizabeth, back in the days when gutters were kept clean and some of our key heritage buildings hadn't been allowed to fall into disrepair by cynical, uncaring property speculators.

Okay I know there’s a drought on, so the beautification plans in terms of public gardens are pretty much on hold. But there can be no excuse for the neglect of such basic services as sweeping gutters and weeding sidewalks. It is not only about beautifying the city ahead of the Cup. The city’s gutters are filled with leaves and twigs, in which weeds and grass are establishing major footholds. In time, the infestation will be such that weeds and grass start to crack up both gutters and tarred roads.

Then, of course, when the heavy rains finally come, flooding will ensue as all that detritus in the gutters is finally washed down into the storm water drains, blocking them.

The new regime seems to be largely oblivious of the need to perform ongoing maintenance of the generally fine infrastructure bequeathed to it after 1994. But the rot has only really set in this year in terms of this city’s gutters. In the past, the municipality employed street sweepers, hundreds of them, apparently on a fairly informal basis. Then some bigwigs in Cosatu decided the fact that such people were employed through labour brokers was wrong. These, Cosatu argued, aren’t “proper” jobs, so let’s do away with them. So hundreds lost their jobs, and we no longer see men sweeping those gutters and preventing the growth of weeds. The result: general decay. Okay, sure, a few weeks ago a big yellow machine came past our house and suctioned up some of the matter lying in the gutters. But this is no substitute for manual labour; for a person physically cleaning gutters and removing weeds.

So, at a time when we are supposed to be labour-intensive, a Cosatu demand has seen a machine or two take over the work of hundreds – and of course fail to do the job properly.

A week’s light, but steady rain in the city has now also left a legacy of grass verges and traffic islands that are starting to resemble small jungles. One wonders where the municipal employees all are.

Oh yes, I’ve just remembered. They’re all on strike – though often it’s hard to tell these days. Except, of course, that the black bags pile up and are split open by dogs and vagrants, waiting for the next cold front to bring a gale which will spread the waste matter far and wide. Which makes you wonder why people are so foolish as to put out their rubbish for collection when they know – if they read their newspaper or watch telly – that a strike is on.

There is a national local government election next year. Most of the people who pay rates in our towns and cities probably support the opposition Democratic Alliance. The majority who don’t pay, or pay very little, vote ANC, which then takes those rates and either wastes them on parties and perks, or uses them to subsidise the free electricity and water which “indigent” township dwellers receive.

One would not wish to see poor people deprived of these handouts because, like pensions and grants, they provide the livelihoods on which so many depend.

However, I believe – as Cape Town and the Western Cape have shown – it would be wise to vote into power people who represent those who actually pay the rates that keep cities running. At the moment the ANC operates in a vacuum where they do as they please with money largely provided by people who did not vote for them. If all Cope and other opposition supporters simply voted DA, we might see other cities again start being run properly.

Just a thought.