EDITOR – At first look, it was encouraging to see the inaugural speech of our new mayor, Zandile Gumede. She spelt out a long list of 43 priorities for the city and maintained that she wanted to interact with the people.
South Africans are looking for the good news so we can be excused for grabbing hold of this attempt in order to feel positive.
But for us at Save Our Berea, it is hard not to be cynical. We have been at the sharp end of the corruption and mismanagement of this council. When we formed our civic action group three years ago we reached out to the politicians and senior officials and offered to work with them, but to no avail. We met with the City Manager and even arranged a public meeting around his diary after he indicated that he would like to attend and interact with the public. Of course he cancelled on the day of the meeting and made no attempt to ever reschedule, and we were fed two different excuses for his no show. We also met with Councillor Peer who is our new deputy mayor, with Tozi Mthetwa who heads up the powerful communications department and a variety of officials. In each case the meetings were cordial and we were in some cases warmly received but the reality is that the meetings produced nothing.
As citizens one almost gets the impression that we have a brand new council. But of course, that is not true and the same political party as before is running the city, and all that has changed, is a power change from one faction to another. The present people at the top were part of every bad decision made by the previous council. The opposition claim that the speech made by our new mayor is purely a cut and paste job from the speech made five years ago by the previous mayor.
We as a civic action group really do not care which political party governs our city, as long as they are honest, fair, transparent and deliver the services that are required by the citizens of this city. We require them to uphold the oath of office that they swore to last week. Every decision made must pass muster against the Constitution of South Africa
We have given this undertaking before, if our new mayor and the council stamp out corruption and carry out their long list of promises, we will be the first to stand and applaud and offer our congratulations.
But if they really are to be believed then they need to reverse one of their first decisions, and that is their intention to scrap the finance and procurement committees. Also, given the controversy of the planning committee decisions, when the ruling party had a choice of maintaining it as a committee made up of political party representatives or a committee including outsiders with expertise, they chose the former. They do not even seem embarrassed that the previous chairman, who they appointed, was involved in corruption, and now sits in gaol, having been found guilty of the murder of an activist who had challenged his activities. This is a committee that will always be targeted by the corrupt, so if the mayor is serious about making eThekwini corruption free, then this is another area in which to be transparent.
Kevin Dunkley
Cheryl Johnson
SAVE OUR BEREA
