‘Year of failure’, a tough pill to swallow

EDITOR – “A year of failure for ward 66” – Southlands Sun, 9 January.

Having dubbed 2014 ‘a year of failure’ is indeed a tough pill to swallow for any government official, community development worker, in fact, any resident or person with an interest in the well-being and progress of the ward.

While Cllr Duncan Du Bois’ six listed areas of ‘failure’ are noted, and are not being challenged or denied, this correspondence, by no means attempts to get into an exchange of who is right or wrong or who is to blame or not, but rather, it is an attempt by me to explore how we can turn the story around to ‘2015- a year of success for ward 66.’ Having said that, I must admit that when I read the article, human nature prompted me to ask the question ‘whose failure is this really’. Allow me to share my thoughts.

· Is it the fault of the ward councillor, because surely the buck stops with him?

· Or, is it the fault of municipal and other government officials?

· Is it perhaps the fault of irresponsible property owners or the fault of unscrupulous landlords?

· Could it be it the fault of irresponsible residents and other ‘nefarious characters’ that dump on public and private land, as well as engage in other unsavoury activities, like drug peddling and prostitution or is the fault of the customers of these “services?

· Is it the Bluff resident who has allowed this to happen around him/her over the years and has not said anything, asked no questions, and has understandably so, gone on with their busy daily lives?

· Or dare I say, is it mine? Should I as the acting senior manager of the South Durban Basin Area Based Management office, have had a handle on all these issues and have brought them to speedy conclusion?

Having listed it like this, I am sure you will agree that it is difficult and not fair to blame any one person or grouping for the six ‘failures’, that I prefer to call challenges, listed by Cllr Du Bois. This is mainly because some of these issues have longstanding complicated histories and they also have long complicated solutions steeped in legal processes. Many of the issues raised are on our ‘books’ and have been raised at our service delivery meetings. They have been raised with the departments concerned, but unfortunately there are no simple, one step swift solutions for them. I will not go into details here, but one such example regarding derelict buildings, just in interpreting municipal bye- laws and regulations, it can take years to achieve a conviction and to obtain an order to demolish a ‘bad building’.

I must note that it is also risky to put blame on government alone, because if government is the fault, then they should be solution too. What this does then, is that it absolves the ‘nefarious characters’ and your general guy next door of taking any responsibility in the attempt at solutions.

My knowledge of community development tells me that a community has to own its challenges, remove blame, and work on a strategy to address the challenges. My experience of working in communities, has also taught me that taking on one challenge (or one aspect of a challenge) at a time, looking for ‘low hanging fruit’ and ‘quick wins’ is the way to go in starting to bring about change. It really becomes scary when we list all our challenges and brand ourselves as failures, because we then run the risk of seeing the challenges as insurmountable.

My view is that the War Rooms can be an extremely useful institutional mechanism in addressing all six challenges raised by the councillor and many other larger challenges. The SDB ABM attends at least 10 War Room meetings in the Basin, and uses War Rooms as our gauge to assess community needs and issues. In many wards, successful programmes have been packaged and implemented as a result of discussions. I am also aware of some very successful War Rooms across the city and lessons can certainly be drawn from them.

The challenge to myself and to the ward is, let us not blame each other, and that each and every one of us takes responsibility for the challenges we experience, and that we also take responsibility to being part of the solutions. The SDB ABM commits to playing its role in making the headline ‘2015- a year of success for ward 66’ a reality. Do you?

EURAKHA SINGH

ACTING SENIOR MANAGER

SDB ABM