Free State mayor proves ANC must ‘get rid of the excess’

At the risk of Kopanong Local Municipality Mayor Xolani Tseletsele showing up at my door, why would you go out of your way to threaten a member of your constituency? In a wifebeater no less.

To its credit, the ANC has suspended him for his actions but I’ll be taking bets that he’ll be “redeployed” to “mobilise the masses” in some other dorpie just before the 2024 election. Let’s not be weighed down by the evidence of this modus operandi – “cough Mangaung cough” – and let’s rather unpack what this means.

It used to be that in order to be the mayor, you needed to be well regarded in the community; a person of substance who climbed ranks in the community either through politics, business or otherwise. Ultimately, you needed to have some stature. The kind of stature that doesn’t require threatening people in front of their kids to be heard.

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Unfortunately, when you have a lot of vacancies that need filling because you’ve turned governance into a jobs programme, you’re going to get circumstances where you’ll struggle to find people of substance.

It could be because the people who would be good don’t want to affiliate to your party. Perhaps it could be that they don’t want to move to a place where every second building is a bottle store. Maybe they just don’t want to deal with top-down governance. Whatever it is… and let’s be honest, it’s a combination of all of that… good leadership is missing from small towns.

So, you’re left with one of two directions. The first is to look for a person with all their teeth, some hair and who can string some words together, deploy them and hope for the best. Alternatively, forget about any service delivery, get somebody who can benefit the looting pipeline, keep the masses quiet and let the place rot.

When you put the latter in power, there’s no wonder why they’d stress out when people start asking questions. They’re not qualified to address their questions and it’s not part of their de facto job description.

Who is Xolani? There’s hardly a news article about him prior to his rising to mayor. Where is the substance required of a person to lead a community? More worryingly, where are the articles of the things he’s done since being mayor?

Apparently, he let the people around him “influence him”. But it’s even scarier that a whole mayor can be influenced to go to a citizen’s house and make a big deal of himself despite being in an outfit better suited for the beach.

Does going to a person’s house and threatening them fix the potholes? No! Does suspending the mayor fix the potholes? No! Does Fikile Mbalula claiming “gone are the days of asinavalo” fix the potholes? No. All that we’re getting out of this is more diversion of resources to deal with the incompetence and indifference of the people thrust into power.

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Come what may of any disciplinary measures against the suspended mayor, but this should never have come to pass in the first place. I can’t imagine that he’s the first mayor to pretend to be the godfather in front of a resident. I also can’t imagine that Mbalula would have lifted a finger if it were whispered to him instead of being filmed. After all, the ANC secretary-general is a beneficiary of bullying the people into cowering to the elite.

There’s a reason some municipalities are functional and some are not and a lot of it has to do with the intention of the leadership.

And if you intend to shut down dissent by threatening your citizenry, at least put on some closed shoes. Ain’t nobody taking you seriously in those slops. Even the kids were sitting on the stairs probably thinking “look at this idiot”.

By the way, if you ask Google to translate “Xolani Tseletsele”, it gives you “get rid of the excess”.

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