What the EFF?

WELL done Richard Poplak, for trawling through not only the Economic Freedom Fighters' manifesto, but also recent issues of Radical Voices to tease out the details of the EFF’s plans for government.

And his analysis is right: there’s not enough in the way of nuts and bolts here, and the crucial issues of capacity, and putting a lid on corruption, remain unaddressed.

But one thing I can’t fault the EFF on is the focus on local government. I cannot see any real evidence that our current rulers have thought innovatively about how to make local government effective, and I have stacks of anecdotal evidence of corruption and incompetence in wards close to my home.

In a ward not far, far away – in fact, less than 30 minutes by car – there’s a councillor who is hated with a dull, throbbing hatred by the bulk of his constituents. He rules his ward like one of the worst examples of medieval fiefdom. I’ve been told of occasions when he ran out of money for malts; drunk as a lord, he simply drove his luxury vehicle from door to door, demanding R50 from each impoverished person he encountered, so he could continue his roistering and wassailing.

The ‘peasants’ over whom he exercises his rule are people who have nothing, or close to it. Very few are employed full-time; some subsist on piece-work; others live on whatever grants are available, or donations of food parcels from an embattled, underfunded NGO. And some, naturally, have gravitated to crime.

Many live in shacks, corrugated iron patched with bits of billboards and tatters of shadecloth. Others live in badly-built RDP housing, while a few have taken over existing houses that have all but fallen into ruin.

Electricity provision is patchy – at a guess, about a third of the ward has power. Water is piped in to the RDP houses and queued for at taps in the shack settlements. Sanitation can be dicey – for months one township had raw sewerage running across the main road where children walked to school. (Lovely health clinic, though, so there is that…)

Recently, the ANC announced its ‘list’ for the municipal elections. A woman resident told me a few days ago, her eyes spitting fire, that the councillor had been celebrating his name being on the list – “as if he had just been elected! Before we even vote!" He had, perhaps, suffered just a touch of anxiety about whether he’d make it onto the list; after that, apparently, it’s a shoe-in, and he can just go back to his idle, plundering lifestyle.

Why is he so sure of the votes? Why does the community not act against him? This woman confirmed what I had heard from a number of people before her: the councillor is close to a very powerful criminal who keeps the community cowed. “If you go against him, if you complain about the councillor, you will get a bullet in the head,” one person told me.

I can’t say if this is true (although I do know of a number of unsolved murders in the area, at least one of them said to be ‘execution-style’); but it doesn’t need to be true, does it? Where murder is not uncommon, just the rumour of revenge killings will keep people’s heads down. So they see mass protests as their only ‘safe’ way of making their voices heard.

The people in this ward run the gamut of sophistication: I’ve met a man with a PhD living here; I’ve met people who read with difficulty. There are elderly, dignified sangomas and pastors, and funky young urbanites who use their mobiles at the speed of light. The woman I was chatting to has registered her own company so that she is ready and able to avail herself of any opportunities she can bid for.

Many are fully aware that their vote is their secret, but feared that the whole ward would be punished for a switch of party allegiance. I suspect their frustration will overwhelm their fears in August, though. I suspect the EFF will take this ward away from the prematurely rejoicing overlord, who has for years so signally failed to do any of the work that’s desperately needed here.

What then? The EFF will win many such wards – in areas where there’s almost no industry or commerce to leverage – but it has little power at national level, where budgets are decided. With the best will in the world, it can’t change much. And while I’d love to believe all the EFF stuff about its cadres being nobly dedicated to a revolutionary cause, I’m cynical: chances are some, at least, of its councillors will fall into similar patterns to those of their predecessors.

Why we should care

Why should the people of the ‘burbs care? Well, if you don’t give a damn about the people stuck in this trap, know this: that frustration, that hopelessness, is bound to spill over. Already crime has ticked upwards in neighbouring suburbs, mine included. The pot has reached boiling point.

No matter who wins and where this August, business and civil society have a responsibility to find ways of not just complaining, but actively holding local governments and individual councillors accountable, of ensuring that our tax money does the job it’s supposed to do: to create a society where there’s hope and possibility and room for all of us to grow and prosper.

*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter.