Elections here – our fingers are crossed
Who to elect? Do we deploy? Do we overrule profiles and credentials? It’s time to think and act wisely.
To a God fearing self-controlled eMalahleni community led by God-fearing fraternal, language and practice of violence needs attention. Nature does not create violent persons, but allows them to be made violent by circumstances prevailing around their non-conducive environments.
Violence is the last resort. Some of us are so proud that disruptive fatal community protests, industrial turmoil affecting workers, and residents long suffering to water and electricity cut-outs prevalent in neighbouring towns, were considerate in eMalahleni. Patience has been bottled up and only the extreme will prop up the cork.
Responsible perpetuators of the seed and ignition of violence must be tracked down to bare the consequences right through to judicial prosecution, be it local councillors, executive mayor, administrator or Cogta MEC.
Mpumalanga Premier, Mr DD Mabuza, waved a whip to fire current Cogta MEC for poor service delivery performance. Elections will drastically influence strategic change to eMalahleni both economically, socially, educationally, and politically. If there are grievances, new leadership will bring up solutions just as they have the capacity to outshine some clean towns people brag about in our ears.
Gone are the days of a Municipal Administrator or Mr Fix it. Loosely interpreted, it is the failure and an indictment to the eMalahleni community to produce, nurture and legally impose their own product of municipal leadership out of all skilled inhabitants from our local kindergarten to the country’s universities.
Let it be job creation to local competent, qualified, dedicated effective mayoral leadership rather than perpetual importation of skills to run our affairs.
It is not enough to blame the rainy weather for potholes when next to us national roads (freeways) do not suffer the same aura. Could it be quality or poor workmanship on the status of our roads?
To get employed on job opportunity, to be taken seriously, you need a credible CV. Why not with town councillors? Or is it an A5 page CV of ‘I am a Comrade’ then you get the job with an assured monthly salary paid by the timid ratepayers? Partly another form of job creation to the unemployed, which will push one from a squatter camp to the affluent suburb of Bankenveld with high fences within three months. No more allegiance to your neglected constituency.
Professional leadership hanging over the fence and not participating in the election, is only stifling progressive and needed development in eMalahleni.
A need for a town civil, mechanical and electrical engineer is a prerequisite to maintain eMalahleni city status as the non-negotiable Mpumalanga Business Hub.
They will save our infrastructure breakdowns being their field of expertise on roads, water, and electrical reticulation.
eMalahleni has an abundance of such people, practicing or unutilized pensioned rusting brains. It is for them to handle issues of quality, poor workmanship, exposed hazardous electrical kiosks and mini subs, public open death trap manholes, barricaded danger zones, street water pipes keeping our taps dry for weekends, mini swimming pools on our roads opening us to fishing rods.
Extreme weather conditions coupled with heavy burst road waterlines and CBD heavy truck traffic discredited by the ANC SG Mantashe who openly proposed an immediate reroute and replan of our city road infrastructure.
For economic development, social structures like organized labour, formal and informal business, legal gurus, environmental proponents, sporting coordinators, tertiary skills developers, health planners and spiritual doctors lean on the shoulders and at the mercy of competent and visionary elected town councillors of integrity and honesty.
With the 20-year journey of political emancipation, let us all aspire to inspire before we expire. The future will judge us for the run down of eMalahleni when opportunities are created to vote for competent leaders of our choice. “The time to build is upon us.” Nelson Mandela
Time to express our derogatory anger, disapproval, and insults to the administrator, mayor, and councillors in the tabloid and social networks is over.
It is our turn to carry the blame for poor service delivery. This includes major stakeholders and opposition parties serving in the same council for pointing fingers to other parties forgetting that they are actually pointing fingers at themselves to the detriment of service delivery by the whole mayoral chamber.
