A better life for who?

By Thabang Motsohi

When I learnt that the police officers involved in the brutal and revolting killing of Andries Tatane in Ficksburg had been arrested by the Independent Complaints Directorate, I felt conflicting emotions. At one level I was relieved and encouraged that our nascent democratic institutions were fearlessly proving the value and role that was expected of them as protectors of the ordinary citizen against excesses of state power. At another level I was very angry that, 17 years into our democratic dispensation, our public-service organs in different sectors still manifest the arrogant, insensitive and paternalistic attitude characteristic of the apartheid government.

For the majority of the people, life experience under the apartheid government is a nightmare that they do not want to relieve. It was for this reason that we adopted a Constitution that puts human rights at the centre of our values as a society. The brutality and savagery of the images that were shown by the SABC, for which they receive my utmost respect and support, served to remind us of the brutality of that painful era.

The Constitution, in its preamble, states that we need to “heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights”. We therefore adopted the theme “a better life for all” as our driving vision to transform our society and eliminate the inequities of the past. This required that, more than ever, the plight of the majority poor must be at the forefront of our efforts as we engaged in the processes of dismantling the inherited apartheid social, economic and ideological systems and vast material divisions that were premised on race, gender and social class.

Local government level is where development is ultimately realised and experienced. This is the area where the most talented and committed people should have been deployed to manage and run our municipal institutions and achieve the intended changes in the lives of the majority poor in our society. On the contrary, we have allowed political expediency to prevail and lead to the current pervasive deterioration of infrastructure in almost all our municipalities excluding the metros for more than a decade.

There is a proven correlation between the status and quality of local public infrastructure and economic investment. Evidence shows that there is significant disinvestment and local economic deterioration in areas under the failed municipalities. We need a Marshall Plan to turn the situation around urgently to avoid a massive uprising by the poor.

The Ficksburg uprising is a now familiar statement and cry by the poor that their wishes and living conditions have been neglected by the ruling class.

What is abundantly clear is that it will not be possible to achieve the type of society and values envisaged in the Constitution unless we fundamentally change our attitude and the manner in which we treat the majority poor in our society. That change, I believe, must start with the way in which we provide for systems to enable the will and wishes of the people to be expressed at the local level. We need to respect and trust the people to elect the people they prefer to represent them in all governance structures that affect them directly. We know this to be at the centre of the “service-delivery” protests that have gripped the country in the past few years, yet we continue to fudge the issue in the policy responses we choose. What the people want is full democratic and accountable representation at local level.

Political accountability is one of the critical values entrenched in the Constitution and at the basic level we need to ask whether our electoral system has served us well on this question. As the late Van Zyl Slabbert stated: “The current system, which is a closed list proportional system, does not give voters access to a public representative.” There is empirical evidence that the so-called service-delivery protests represent more than poor services. At the core, they are about the inability of citizens to elect representatives of their choice and hold them accountable.

The unintended consequence of the current electoral system is that it permits parties to become employment agencies that dispense patronage to their trusted political sympathisers and cronies. There are a finite number of representational positions at all tiers of government. The ability to decide who will occupy these positions is a powerful instrument in the hands of parties. In this way we are perpetuating the wealth-accumulation strategy and practice for the politically connected elite that underpinned the apartheid economic policy.

Thabang Motsohi is a strategy consultant.