Eskom and Municipalities

Dear Amandla!

The National Treasury has decided to freeze financial allocations to about 60 municipalities on the grounds that these municipalities have failed to honour their financial commitments and have failed to pay Eskom and other service delivery creditors. As a result, the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) officials have threatened legal action to force the treasury to release financial allocations.

SALGA officials are adamant that the allocation is for service delivery purposes and feel treasury has overstepped itself. At the same time, the municipalities are not giving answers to community members about corruption within these municipalities and why these municipalities have been continually failing their audits.

The action of the treasury may put pressure on the municipalities but it won’t get to the root of the problem. The paralysis of these municipalities does not come from within these municipalities nor is it a capacity problem. It is the implementation of neo-liberal policies that give rise to such failures and the blame must be directed at the national government and the ruling party.

Many local government councillors and officials have been corrupted through tender systems introduced by the ruling party; it is this “tenderpreneurship” that has fast-tracked the capture of most municipalities, and corrupted them to the point of paralysis. It must not be said municipalities are failing, but that the policies of the ruling party are failing.

Take into consideration that the ruling party also faces the crisis of managing internal factions, which further cripples the functioning of these municipalities. The worst manifestations of this are in the mining villages, towns and cities, where the greed of members of the ruling party is palpable and clearly visible in their behaviour.

Community members are marginalized from decision making and excluded from involvement in the so-called developmental projects, and this calls for serious attention. When municipal councillors serve as labour brokers for mining companies, and patronage of community members runs rampant, we do not need to search far and wide for the cause of the failure of our municipalities.

SALGA officials want to take legal action against an organ of state. It is not that these officials are unaware of their responsibilities, but that for many years their leaders have been able to override or influence decisions at municipal level. The councillors are now knee-deep in factions and their careers are tied to national factional leaders pursuing financial interests at the expense of poor communities.

Our broken municipalities are the product of the absence of political leadership, the total arrogance of many people in responsible positions, and it is also grossly influenced by an infantile politics. The ruling party must admit it has failed South Africans.

Matthews Hlabane

Dirty Energy

Dear Amandla!

Amelia formal settlement in Sasolburg falls under the Metsi-Mohole local municipality in Fezile Dabi District, in far northern Free State Province, near Johannesburg. Built by the municipality as part of the RDP the housing development programme, starting in 2005, Amelia has an estimated 5 000 – 6 000 houses and shacks. The municipality builds these houses without sanitation or electricity. People depend on coal, paraffin and gas stoves for cooking and heating, with coal most commonly used for domestic purposes. In winter, dark clouds and fumes rise from burning coal.

Sasolburg is one of the country’s most heavily industrialized areas, with high levels of particulate matter. Combined with burning of coal for domestic purposes, this leaves residents of Sasolburg facing respiratory problems – black lung, congestive heart failure, chronic bronchitis, asthma and more. This led the department of environmental affairs to declare the area as a pollution priority area in 2014.

Since most women are unemployed and lack electricity, they must resort to “Diebolbol” – coal waste mixed with water and soil to make a round shape that burns. This requires woman to walk for hours to dig for waste coal with their bare hands, just so that their families can have access to energy in the house.

Government has no plan to address the situation in this area. The municipality lacks the political will to learn about or invest in energy efficient housing and renewable energy, which could improve the living conditions of residents. Instead, they have introduced an insulting intervention to reduce the impact of coal burning – a new technique called basa-njengogo.

This uses the same dirty coal as before, simply reversing the sequence of use from “paper, wood and coal” to “coal, wood and paper”. People must still pay R50.00 for a bag of coal that lasts two weeks. This doesn’t change anything or improve communities’ health or access to energy.

The provision of electricity to that community is supposed to be a priority, according to the municipality’s Integrated Development Plan for 2013/2014.The department of human settlement needs to resolve the issue of funding with regard to the criteria used for bulk supplies at municipality level, and more funding is requested for low voltage networks and house connections.

Secondly, Eskom is supposed to supply Free Basic Energy to farm workers’ houses and the capacity in terms of generations of electricity, to provide the additional capacity. This needs to be addressed at national level.

Rhona Riet

Attacks against nationals

Dear Editor

As a naturalized foreigner I would like to share my views on the recent attacks. It was only five years ago that South Africa hosted the Football World Cup, an event that politically and socially put South Africa prominently on the world stage. The recent spate of attacks in KwaZulu-Natal made me remember the 24-hour attack on the Kennedy Road settlement: that event in 2010 and the attacks in 2015 involved similar and sad moments to reflect on. Both of these happened in KZN and in both cases politically motivated statements against crime became a supposed justification for sustained attacks and infringements of human rights of many innocent people.

The history of South Africa is replete with many examples of loss of life of the working poor. From the atrocities at Sharpeville, to Soweto, the Trojan Horse to Marikana, there are many events that mark violence against the working poor.

The most recent attacks against foreign nationals are no less serious than the above-mentioned atrocities and there are some fundamental issues to consider. This is a nation 21 years into democracy. Ironically, though it is faring worse than its neighbour on education, employment and empathy, yet it still draws many migrants One would be better off even in a country like Zimbabwe if getting educated, finding a job or finding help were key determinants for migration. I would argue that people still come to South Africa because South Africa represents hope. Hope of a better life for all as Mandela and the ANC proposed in 1994. That hope draws many to South Africa, but was systematically crushed in moments of madness not just in KZN but in the spread of fear across all provinces.

Reading these attacks and drawing comparisons to 2008 has become a norm for many analysts. I would argue that this comparison is fundamentally flawed because it would require some acceptance of the idea that South Africans are inherently xenophobic. The history of struggle, the constitution and the general hospitality of people who live in South Africa show that South Africans are not inherently xenophobic. To argue this would be tantamount to labelling sectors of the working class as a murderous barbaric mass. This is undoubtedly wrong, as you will find countless examples of people in all areas of the country ensuring peace and security for all. Members of the working class, like all people in this country, are individuals with varying backgrounds, opinions and life experiences.

I put it that attacks against foreigners today must be understood as part of the longer history of the attacks against the poor. What is missing in the analysis – somewhat expectedly as most analysts are part of the elite – is the role played by opinion and power makers in creating a narrative that divides working class citizens with green IDs from working class people without green IDs. There is no evidence that a Malawian, Zimbabwean or any other national carry any genetic, cultural, sociological or political superiority to working class South Africans, yet it is common in the minds of the South African middle class that others are more trustworthy, hard-working and cheaper to employ – and the list goes on – than our own people. This is a dangerous perception that has been created over the last 21 years, just as the apartheid government created a perception of racial superiority in its 36 years in power.

To understand these attacks, we need to begin to look at power holders and narrative makers instead of laying blame on the masses. Get to the crux of why some sectors of South Africa have created a superiority buffer between themselves against foreign nationals who work for them, and a second layer of superiority involving the idea that those who work for them are better than those they would not hire.

The moment is now, to get to the bottom of the underlying reasons for these attacks and to find a way to ensure they never happen again to anyone who lives in South Africa.

Jean Thierry