Service delivery fury has finally hit suburbia

When Andries Tatane was killed by police more than a decade ago during a service delivery protest, his death caused barely a ripple in the nation. Except perhaps in his Free State hometown of Ficksburg.

This was in the afterglow of a successfully staged soccer World Cup and just a month before the 2011 municipal elections. Soon, the community activist became but another forgettable footnote in the perpetual story of protests over failing municipal services in our country.

Yet the 33-year-old was anything but that to his wife and two young children. Or to the young people he tutored in maths and science.

Here was a brutal killing committed in the glare of television cameras and numerous eyewitnesses by supposed keepers of peace and order. Unarmed and barechested, Tatane was set upon by a group of policemen who assaulted him with truncheons before he was shot. All seven officers charged with his murder were acquitted. A curious picture to this day.

In the past, dissatisfaction about the provision of services such as water and electricity was largely confined to black residential areas, with burning barricades seen by some as merely a manifestation of the country’s creeping anarchy. Which presumably called for the firm hand of the law. The biggest complaint of the better off would have been an administrative one, such as an incorrect billing statement maybe. But certainly not about absent electricity or water. Or about perennial “load-reduction” which punishes the law-abiding and the guilty in equal measure.

Thanks to the electricity crisis, the negative effects of governance failure have reached suburbia’s doorstep, abetted in no small measure by the indifference of privileged suburbanites. The catastrophe has become today’s great leveller, wreaking havoc in the lives of rich and poor alike. Only the richest of the rich can buy neartotal immunity from debilitating load-shedding, by shelling out a packet to install gadgets for alternative power. Eskom has emerged as the mother of governance failures.

Of course, the chief culprits of service delivery failures are the political parties and their leaders who are elected to run our local authorities. Since the last municipal polls, and quite apart from a penchant to employ the unsuited to run local administrations, the behaviour of elected parties has shown us largely the worst attributes of coalition government.

In cities from Tshwane to Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay, party leaders have displayed more interest in acquiring the spoils of office, spending much of their time not on council work but on haggling for positions. They have thought nothing of collapsing a council leadership to get their way — as many times as it takes. In their view, voters can wait indefinitely for the promised delivery of better services.

The unedifying, thuggish behaviour of the so-called city fathers (and mothers) is a symbol of the instability that has befallen too many local authorities, which are supposed to be the first line of service delivery to citizens.

But what of the role and culpability of citizens in our national predicament?

Instructive here is the caveat, by Plato I think, that “if you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools”.

Events in democratic South Africa, such as the bad decisions taken about Eskom and power generation, and the mainly self-serving scuffles over council positions, suggest that it is not enough merely to “take an interest” in the country’s politics and vote.

They imply that, rather than naively placing blind faith in politicians simply because we happen to have elected them, we should retain the right to remove them if they begin to act, wilfully or through incompetence, against the interests of citizens.

The abiding lesson of load-shedding is that we trusted the politicians to know what is good for us and the country, by virtue of their being in government. And now, as the chickens come home to roost, we feel sorry for ourselves.

I’ve always grappled with the concept that reduces our participation in politics to a five-yearly ritual of casting our ballots. Which says that once we have voted, we forfeit our right to change our minds, and to eject from office leaders who go rogue.

As we have seen from our recent history, great leaders can do much good. But bad leaders can cause grievous damage to the country and severely harm our welfare, while we remain politically neutered. They can even send us straight back to the Dark Ages.

To keep errant leaders in check, should we not consider reviewing our legislation to enable citizens to recall representatives who obviously work against the collective interests of those who elect them, or who grossly deviate from their mandate? Questionable, too, is a system that allows politicians into legislatures on the coat-tails of parties, and not because they have been chosen by an electorate they are accountable to.

The threat of recall (with the loss of a salary and other privileges) might curb the time-wasting buffoonery and chaos visited on long-suffering residents in many cities, where the work of serving citizens takes second place to the wishes of power-hungry leaders who care little if the cities they are supposed to look after go to pot.

It would be tolerable if the wrangling was over policies, the best way to improve the lot of the cities and their inhabitants. In this case, it seems to be all about using city assets for self-enrichment and disbursing patronage to parasitic hangers-on.

Next month is Andries Tatane’s birthday. Had the councillors in Ficksburg done the jobs for which they were elected, he would be turning 45.

In the past, dissatisfaction about the provision of water and electricity was largely confined to black residential areas