Inside Report with Basch: Calling all councillors
The new Premier of Gauteng, Davis Makhura, arranged a conference for all ward councillors in Gauteng.
The point of this conference was to analyse the challenges that ward councillors are facing along with ways to increase public participation in government.
This was an affair of note; it was attended by executive mayors, speakers of the house and members of provincial legislatures as well as Minister Pravin Gordhaan. It started with the air of hope and excitement that finally the voices of the councillors would be heard.
It was incredible to hear that problems that I face here in Ekurhuleni, in terms of service delivery to the community I serve, is being experienced throughout the province. Naturally this knowledge didn’t make me feel any better about the state of government at all, actually it made me cringe because I had foolishly hoped that it was just my little corner of the world that had issues and that here in this room of dignitaries, I would find the answer and support to change that.
What I found was that you can’t trust a minister, because to your face he will be like “I understand the challenges you face and want to commit government support for you and thus for your community”, but as soon as the TV cameras are on he is like “Ward councillors need to do their jobs or we will fire them”.
So let me get this straight, government is not supporting the ward councillors and is failing at service delivery, forcing the ward councillor to have to answer to the community, and it is the councillor that will get fired for the government’s failures. Awesome, at least I know where I stand, all of the responsibility, all of the accountability but none of the power.
So after two days of blah bah blah and great lunches on the tax payers’ account, the resulting factor is a set of commitments that I could have given over the phone in two minutes, because they are obvious. Communities need service delivery, point and period. Ward committees are by and large ineffective, because there is no support for them, and yes, not all councillors have the proficiency level required to hold office – but that’s ‘cos their parties prefer politics over service, nudge nudge wink wink; we all know who I am talking about.
So as I face another week of little answers, no response and poor service, I feel happy knowing that at the end of it all I will be fired for the incompetence of our ministers and legislators. And with that I hope everyone has a great week even if its not.
