Broken local governments proof of democracy gone mad

I don’t know what’s happening in South Africa, nor how long this musical chairs politicking will go on for, but the chaos in at least four metros have given us severe whiplash recently.

Joburg was a wild shift before we got the up and down of Tshwane and then, somewhere between it all, Ekurhuleni went under the hammer, being awarded to a mayor from a minor party. And that was just a day after a DA candidate got the speakership in Mangaung, despite the party only having about half the number of ANC seats.

To call this madness is probably accurate but then listening to the remarks seems like the encore nobody asked for.

In Mangaung, we’re hearing complaints about an opposition speaker being an afront to democracy, coming from the same benches that gave us a 1% Jozi mayor.

Tshwane is warned that the new mayor must not get too comfy, and the new okes in Ekurhuleni and Jozi have the nerve to talk about service delivery.

What’s the point of breaking something while fighting to control it?

I don’t know how local government works, but I also don’t know how my laptop works. All I know is that when I turn it on, it switches on and when I want to send an email, it does that.

How does it do that? Don’t ask me, but seeing it do that lets me know, it’s working. And yes, every so often, I get a new laptop and guess what. It also works.

The same can’t be said of local government in many of these areas. It’s amusing because people are fighting to occupy the positions to offer service delivery at the expense of offering service delivery.

A change in most instances would be welcome, though it need not be a change of persons, but a change of personalities. We need outcomes when it comes to local government.

Local governments clearly not working

I don’t know how local government works but we can all see when it does, and when it doesn’t.

The parks look rotten, the streets suck, it takes forever to do municipal business, and work from home as a concept is too many syllables so it’s shortened to just, from home.

In sum, it’s evident from the outcomes when local governments are failing.

In the case of Mangaung which had national government intervention, it’s not a great look for them either.

When I look at successful coalitions, there’s a common thread – they have their agreements up front and part of that agreement is to let the elected executives execute on behalf of the people.

The coalitions that fail are the ones plagued by turncoating and mid-term side negotiations. It does not bode well for post 2024 elections if we’re expecting no outright majority.

I can hardly stomach one president a term, but soon the floodgates will open to see-saw between the political flavour of the month and whichever kingmaker micro parties they can court.

Typically, we go through the voting process every five years so that the elected leadership can actually do something with their term. Similarly, the executive leadership needs time to do things rather than be seen to occupy seats.

Yes, it’s important to dig a hole and pretend to have contributed significantly to some new whack building’s foundations while wearing an offensively new hi-vis jacket, but sometimes we actually need you to sit at a desk and deal with policy.

That can’t be done when leaders keep changing.

So, let’s be adults and sit around a table and agree to certain things before we form coalitions. Number one should be that you cannot let the business of the term be dominated by who is going to be in the big chair when the people on the ground here care more about what the big chair does for them, rather than who is in it.

We might not know how politics works, but we can see when it’s working and while it may be working for the elephants, it’s not working for the grass.