No quick fix for local government

The latest addition to President Jacob Zuma’s impeccable lip-service delivery record puts him almost on par with Bob the Builder as an over-ambitious Mr Fix It.

While the president hits all the right notes, that’s what election season is all about anyway, the meta-narrative of comments emanating from the ruling party heavyweights demonstrates exactly what is wrong with local government, and why it won’t be fixed any time soon.

I think the message has been conveyed loud and clear: until Jesus comes, we’re stuck with the Messianic, miracle-working powers of the ANC and, of course, as Zuma said it is, entirely up to the ANC to fix local government.

In case we missed it, Julius Malema hammered the message home, demonstrating just how out of touch the ruling party has become.

The problem with local government is exactly that it has been treated as yet another layer in the ruling party’s growing parasitic patronage network crippling and incapacitating the almost all levels of the state.

There can be no quick fix for local government unless a major paradigm shift drives the ANC away from the crony state mentality.

While both Jacob and Julius lament unaccountable, ineffective, inaccessible and unresponsive municipal counselors they naturally ignore that this is rooted in the organisational culture and nonchalant approach of the ANC to this pivotal level of government. The selling of RDP houses by counselors which Julius lambastes, and the charge sheet against local government that Zuma has drawn up, refers overwhelmingly, if not near-exclusively, to ANC deployees in our counsels.

Even in my own ANC-controlled metropolitan counsel the wards counselors represent, and their contact details, are not readily available, and most South Africans, apart from those initial posters during the campaign, won’t even recognise their counselor’s face on the street.

Until the ruling party, and South Africans more broadly, realise that no party emblem, logo, star-studded campaign soundtrack or mass bash in Rustenburg will fix local government, we’re in for a bumpy ride.

Contrary to Julius’s belief, it is in fact all about individuals, and South Africa deserves caring, committed, dedicated counselors with a track-record of community engagement and a keen understanding of the real issues our counsels need to address. Luthuli House is just too far removed to provide a blanket quick fix.

I guess this is just too much to ask from an organisation that, 16 years since “liberation”, still deems it necessary to refer to itself as the mythical “national liberation movement” on its website, when South Africans need a government that understands the dynamics of a society in a modern socioeconomic and increasingly globalised context.