Makhanda is held up as an example of a municipality that refused to take the deteriorating state of their area lying down as they not only managed to get the High Court to place their municipality under administration; they also proved how successful a pact between the local community and businesses could be to tackle problems with service delivery. Even though the Eastern Cape province is pushing back and is appealing the Makhanda ruling; it has prompted other local community groups to consider similar action. It has provided a model for the rest of the country “a new way of doing democracy that cuts across class and race and ideology”, the director of the Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics at Rhodes University, Pedro Tabensky told Bloomberg. In a damning article in the Financial Times, Joseph Cotterill describes the court verdict as a “rebuke” to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s style of leadership and a warning about “the risks of procrastinating over repairs to the looted state.” – Linda van Tilburg
By Thulasizwe Sithole
“There are donkeys on the rubbish pile picking through the middens. Beneath the hot Eastern Cape sun, the garbage mound that a negligent municipality has left to rot in the middle of the South African township of Fingo is actually smoking.” That is how Joseph Cotterill of the Financial Times describes Makhanda, the municipality that took its council to court and forced the Eastern Cape provincial government to appoint an administrator to run the district until fresh election can be held.
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The FT says it is “proof at last” that the rule of the ANC over the last ten years had turned into “a literal trash fire” in the collapse of the Makhanda municipality. The potholes and raw sewerage flowing into the streets of a town that is “home to Victorian church spires and the leafy precincts of Rhodes university” reflects what Cotterill calls “the systemic rot facing President Cyril Ramaphosa.” A local civic activist, Ayanda Kota told the paper that “each incompetence in the ANC government leads to another”.
But Cotterill says Makhanda is not only proof of the ANC’s undoing; it is also a “sign of hope” and a warning to President Cyril Ramaphosa that he can no longer procrastinate in repairing the state that had been looted. The court ruling agreed with the Unemployed People’s Movement in Makhanda that the municipality is “in a permanent state of unhygienic filth” and has also ruled that the present administration should be dissolved and that administrators should take over.
The court ruling is regarded by the FT as “a rebuke to Ramaphosa” who came to power two years ago for his cautious style of leadership where he likes to negotiate and “seek consensus and compromise” before he embarks on reforms for South Africa’s deeply indebted economy and the problems that the country is facing, including a lack of jobs and a land issue for the country’s black majority. The FT is critical of the fact that Ramaphosa is still looking for a “social compact on electricity” in a time when the country faces rolling blackouts and the state power monopoly is crumbling.
Ramaphosa spoke in his State of the Nation address about “broad-based coalitions” between business, labour and communities. “This isn’t just spin” but a reflection of the country’s history. The dismantling of apartheid came about because of hard compromises and Ramaphosa was one of the chief negotiators of the consensus that was found at the time. “Achieving consensus and building social compacts is the very essence of who we are”, he is quoted as saying in his SONA speech.
But Cotterill says consensus on the ground “looks different.” The consensus that he witnessed in Karoo towns characterised by “ANC misrule” is consensus between businesses and citizens who come together to find solution to maintain water supplies. This was also the case in Makhanda, which is plagued by water shortages. In the area businesses and ratepayer groups backed the UPM lawsuit.
The FT says civic coalitions exist, but they are not the ones envisaged by Ramaphosa; “they are having to replace the state that his party has wrecked at the local level.” This was because funds that should have been spent on water and other services had been siphoned off to “patronage, bloated payrolls and contracts held by cronies.” A researcher called it “a kind of medieval system of fiefdoms. In return voters who have been supporting the ANC have been promised jobs and tenders. Kota describes the state as predatory and says it was “never built to bring liberation to us as a people”.
What is happening in Makhanda is a precedent where the system is short-circuited. But the ANC, backed by provincial leaders is appealing against the Makhanda decision saying the services in the town were “on the mend and there was no need for the ruling.” The FT said they clearly did not stand downwind from the smoking stack of garbage left to rot in the Fingo township.
The UPM activists are excited about their victory even though it may be overturned and say they have disrupted ANC attempts to suffocate civic debate. One of the Fingo performing artists, 33-year old Bathendwa Hulu told the FT that action was not taken by Ramaphosa; it was done by the community. He called on South Africa to put their heads together, to stop talking and to start initiating.
Their conversation was halted by the fumes of the rubbish dump that grew more acrid. “Quietly, and with little notice, it has begun to burst into flames.”
