There’s a reason that all crime podcasters agree that the first rule of criminality is, don’t write down your crimes. As far as bad ideas go, an ANC minister of finance writing to an ANC mayor about how financially irresponsible he’s been, is quite up there. It’s almost as if he didn’t know that Helen Zille was a journalist in a previous life.
These are the people who are respectively tasked with running what should be Africa’s greatest economy and Africa’s greatest city. Instead, their little banter coming to light has shown how inept their team is at running anything.
Godongwana’s criticism of Morero
You’d think that if you’re on the same team, you’d pick up the phone and be like, “hebana, this is going to cause problems”. But no, phones are apparently not the preferred method of comrade communication.
At least there’s some dispute regarding the amount of fiscal responsibility they wish to dispense. We can take comfort in knowing that at least somebody is willing to take a step back and think about where the non-existent money is going to come from to finance Johannesburg.
The mayor may not think that the city is in crisis but the occupants of houses that had no water for several weeks may have a different view. Proposing a 65% increase to a water levy a year after implementing an electricity connection fee suggests a little trouble. An unemployment rate in the richest city that’s higher than the national average does suggest that Mayor Dada Morero is too busy looking for Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi in a Carlton Hotel bathtub to notice his city’s issues.
ANC’s own goal
A combined ANC own goal might not hand the city to the DA but it certainly won’t win the party any votes, especially not after the mud-slinging accusation that Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana is colluding with the DA. I suppose when your go-to responses of racism or counter-revolutionary agents are not available to you, you’ll just have to improvise.
In a brilliant display of creative genius, the mayor applies that improvisation by alleging collusion with the racist and counter-revolutionary DA. We’re not told what evidence the mayor is employing to make the allegation but I’m sure we can all agree that we trust him to have it. We also trust him to look at numbers that tell us that the metro is going to be bankrupt, put his hand up to the budget and with the super powers of Neo in Matrix, utter, “No”. And just like that, Johannesburg is safe yet again, has a budget surplus and the botanical garden fountains are operational again, being powered by pebble bed nuclear energy.
I’d hand it to Morero if he could do any of that by the waving of a hand but alas, it is not to be and fixing Jozi will take a little more of that thing called work and actually getting to those campaign promises. Working to fix the city feels like such a foreign idea, I’m betting that it will be Operation Dudula’s next target.
Johannesburg has given South Africa so much and it’s sad that it’s languishing under the silliness of political actors who can’t seem to get their act together.
You’ve got to appreciate the balls it took Godongwana to write that letter but if he really wanted to hit the mark, he should have led with the most obvious truth; something along the lines of “Dada, you don’t care about Johannesburg, what makes it great and how to uplift it. You’ve shown such little interest in improving the lives of those who live in the city and you’ve spent nearly two years chillin’ while the city breaks”.
The looming bankruptcy in Joburg isn’t the problem. It’s merely the effect of the real problem; the city’s leadership never cared about the city.
