LUKANYO MNYANDA: What’s the point of voting when leaders don’t know the meaning of local?

This isn’t one of those weeks someone with a regular column dreads. Sometimes one gets those, when there’s nothing particularly interesting to talk about.

There are many “big picture” events to talk about this week, from COP26 to the outlook for global interest rates and, locally, finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s delayed medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS). But my interest this week is distinctly local.

The UN climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland, is entering a second week. This week there was the big news on Eskom’s green transition deal with developed nations. Considering who’s chairing the talks that are supposed to save humanity from almost certain extinction, it’s not surprising that many are struggling to take it seriously.

My own optimism about the $8.5bn “deal” for Eskom wavered when I got to the part of the statement where British Prime Minister Boris Johnson described it as a “game changer”.

The initial headlines might have given the impression that there was someone in Glasgow who was ready to sign a cheque and hand it over to Eskom CEO André de Ruyter, but the language in the official declaration is a lot less definitive, with words such as “mobilise” that are open to interpretation.

When one reads about something that is “subject” to terms that aren’t exactly clear, and the need to find “consensus”, it’s hard not to be sceptical. 

Having been delayed twice already, players in the financial markets will be focused on Godongwana’s MTBPS on Thursday, though its potential contents have been widely scrutinised already. He has already indicated that he’s more likely to listen to SA Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago’s advice on the dangers of making long-term spending commitments based on a short-term boost from record commodity prices, than be seduced by those arguing for a basic income grant.

Since the local elections on November 1, I have been more interested in my little part of Johannesburg. I was seriously torn about who to vote for and, like most people, for the wrong reasons. Judging by comments picked up socially and on social media, it seems we tend to have an unhealthy focus on political parties rather than asking about the quality of the person who’s supposed to be our local representative. In my case, who was most likely to pick up the phone and respond to a plea to do something about a car wreck parked in front of the building?

As this was a local election, people living in my street should really have been bothered less by the party their councillor belonged to and more about who’s likely to do something about the decay and taking on the landlord who seems intent on turning our area into a slum.

In the past couple of years we’ve had an unofficial taxi rank spring up, with none of the required facilities. What has since happened? People relieve themselves against walls and my daughters won’t even walk to the local mall due to the smell. And it hasn’t got any better in almost two years.

Both the DA and the ANC have a huge task if they are going to form a government without each other

But as residents of this part of Johannesburg you are left in a hopeless situation because the two main parties won’t work together. You ask your local councillor why things aren’t being done, and they complain that there’s no way to hold anyone accountable at the city level, and the best you can hope for is a change of administration. But the voters haven’t given the city a new administration.

Both the DA and the ANC have a huge task if they are going to form a government without each other. The official opposition party came through with a 26% share of the vote. The EFF, which got just under 11%, is the only party the DA has completely ruled out as a coalition partner, and it is reluctant to co-operate with the ANC. It’s therefore hard to see it being able to form a viable administration, even if it wins over Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA and its 16% share. The most any of the other parties got was 2.9%.

The arithmetic doesn’t make for a stable and lasting administration. The ANC, with 34%, could get closer to the key 50% mark if it entered into an inevitably problematic partnership with the EFF. For its part, it hasn’t ruled out anyone, as unpalatable as the idea of a tie-up with the DA might be to some of its members. It could also be a strong weapon in the hands of the so-called “radical economic transformation” ANC faction as it seeks to discredit and potentially remove Cyril Ramaphosa as president in 2022.

But I’m not a political analyst interested in the “big picture” implications for the future of the DA and the ANC. I’m just a voter who took part in a local election that’s supposed to be about service delivery in my local area and avoiding its slide to being another Yeoville or Hillbrow. Voters in Johannesburg — and in Tshwane — made their voices heard, and the outcome indicates that they favour some sort of “grand coalition” between the two biggest parties.

Politicians like to say they are the “servants of the people” but rarely act like that. In my interactions with DA and ANC people — as a potential voter rather than a journalist — they blamed each other for the crumbling state of my suburb. If they opt for unworkable coalitions instead of working together, and avoid accountability for failure to fix things because it is always somebody else’s fault, why should I or any of my neighbours bother to take part next time?