No method to this madness

I thought there must be something substantive behind the city of Cape Town’s flexing its muscles to the court order by government’s provincial arm to utilise community halls for the displacement of foreign nationals. The reasoning that the provincial government first use resources under its own care just does not sound right. Is it possible that lack of joint work and planning have sunken public service agents to such kinder garden stand-offs?

I suggest Rasool issue another, contrary to the press release in this instance. Granted, most senior public officials did not see this crisis coming; granted, also, that the crisis being here, local authorities do not command as much resources to simply perform miracles. Hey! Wake up! The city of Cape Town is not a family corner shop, neither is the provincial government. The raison d’tre of both institutions lies in service provision. This is the corporate essence of both your community plans. Drifting off into a public fight over who should use which resources first is flouting the very reason for the existence of all public institutions: delivering services to all inhabitants within your catchment area.

The provincial government should’ve been the first to anticipate the impending crisis. When it erupted in other parts of the country, one would have expected provincial bodies to have a risk prevention and management plan in place. Joint planning sessions with the city’s management were really the only sensible path to take. It is local authorities who must deliver services to local people and who know intimately the texture of every local community. Provincial delegates to these meetings were duty bound to ask what they could bring to the table. Do you need extra venues? How will local services cope with the tension? How can we both draw businesses into this preventative plan? No. Nothing of the sort. The order of the day is working in silos and jealously guarding utilisation of resources.

It is not too late.

The best Rasool could do is be the bigger man (one is temped to say bigger person, but this might be too politically correct by Rasool’s own standards). Issue a statement detailing the plans for the coming period. Central to this must be joint work and planning with the provincial government. It’s best not to spring this on the fragile ego of the provincial government: rather arrange a meeting to discuss the steps. There’s nothing wrong with a joint statement. The bigger man would do it. The following issues are to be part of any discussion on cooperation:

1. What resources are needed and what does each institution holds in trust on behalf of local people: halls, human and financial resources are kept in trust and should be used for the common good of local people. What can be more in the interest of all local people than to find joint solutions to this terrible crisis? Once this is done, get someone to lead on making these resources available to alleviate the conditions. A group of people made up of personnel from both institutions would be ideal. Let them develop an implementation plan pronto, complete with measurables and a risk management plan.

2. Local people might have a reaction to this, for they might feel their money and other resources are being used. It is normal for people to react like this in conditions of competing for things when there is clearly not enough to go around. This is no time for political parties to score points or to be divisive along party lines. Officials will have to rope politicians in to speak to their constituencies where necessary, or even where it is deemed not necessary. If you are going to bring people to community halls from different locations, the host community must be prepared for it, otherwise it will simply not work. Here one cannot depend on peace enforced by the police or army — this sort of peace is always fragile. Build cooperation on understanding.

3. Delivery of services must be carefully accompanied by a paper trail. There are two reasons for this: firstly, both institutions want to be accountable. Nothing beats accountability backed up by this kind of proof. The second reason is that this might be ground breaking work and could be used as an example of best practice across the country. The opportunity this presents to both the city of Cape Town and the provincial government of the Western Cape is simply unprecedented. Handle this maturely and the eyes of everyone will be fixed on the method behind the results. There is no reason why it should be in one area either. Think of the best practice case studies in community engagement, cohesion, joint resource allocation, corporate planning. There are more reasons to take this path than the current paper tiger roles the two institutions cemented themselves into. My advice is, drill yourselves out.

4. Keep the public informed of progress. There are many salutary projects and admirable ventures both institutions are engaged in. The downfall of many public organisations is simply that they don’t tell us what they’ve done about the challenges we helped identify. Tell us. It’s more worth spending money in letting us know how you carry out your work instead of what you plan doing preventing you from doing your job.

This current legal battle and hurling of insults is unmitigated madness. The only thing we can learn from this is how we don’t want to go about delivering services. There’s no method to this madness!