Municipalities fail the leaders they’re named after when court has to remind them of ubuntu
· Citizen
If you ever needed a lesson in how little the names of the places matter to political leadership, you need only read the recent Constitutional Court judgment in Saziwa v Mhlontlo Local Municipality.
The case revolves around the provision of emergency shelter for people in the Mhlontlo and OR Tambo municipalities in the Eastern Cape.
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Municipalities not living up to names of former leaders
Mhlontlo was named after King Mhlontlo, the king of the AmaMpondomise people for over four decades and credited with championing black unity.
OR Tambo? He was the anti-apartheid activist who kept the ANC held together despite being in exile and suffered tremendous personal risk and loss in the pursuit of a better life for particularly black South Africans.
Now, the leaders of the districts to whom these two stalwarts lent their names refuse to help their people in need based on legal technicalities?
In Mhlontlo, even the UDM performs better than the DA electorally, so you can’t even use the popular Cape Town line of the DA, ignoring the plight of the poor.
In this case, you have a whole lot of indigent people who had their houses destroyed by a natural disaster and received no help, not from their ward councillors, not from their local municipalities and not from their province. In fact, each of those entities ended up pointing fingers at one another. I guess something needs to prove African proverbs true: when the elephants fight, the grass suffers.
It’s striking because one would never expect the likes of Kumkani (Xhosa for King, in case you didn’t know), Mhlontlo, or OR Tambo to act in this manner, and they hardly had the resources flowing to them that districts and municipalities now have.
What’s even more striking is the spirit of solidarity these historic leaders had, while the current leadership, under those legends’ names, take for themselves and leave little for their people.
No sense of ubuntu
A whole ward councillor with their salaries did not tell the district office about the problems their people are facing. A whole district staff with offices and salaries could only say that the provincial government hasn’t declared an emergency.
At what point do the people see a benefit from the services of the people paid to represent them? What is the point of this representation if poor people have to ask three levels of the courts to help them get services?
You’d think that the party that got popular on the promises of a better life for the poor would jump at the opportunity to help the poor, especially in their time of need. Instead, according to the allegations, Ms Mankayi has been waiting for an RDP house since 2013. With the site abandoned by the construction team, she’s been living in a mud hut until a weather event destroyed it partially in 2022, and she’s had to remain in the one semi-standing room with an exposed electrical cable.
You’d think that the leadership under the names of Tambo and Mhlontlo wouldn’t dare kick the can or give the opportunity to show a sense of ubuntu to another, as though it were some sort of burden.
It’s not even their own personal money that would be at stake, but I guess when that money is seen to be up for grabs, it may as well be.
It’s crazy that with so much more money pumped into rural municipalities since 1994, we’re still struggling to keep our hands off it and deploy it for the benefit of the people it’s meant to help.
You cannot preach that you are anti-colonial, pro-poor, and here for the people when you need a judge to remind you of your human duties to those you’re charged with protecting.
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