MARK BARNES: Choose the right mayor — do not look beyond that for now

It used to be that when you were looking at buying residential property there were only three things to consider: location, location and location. Those three have changed.

There are still three major issues, but now they are water, electricity and location (and a whole bunch of other important, but perhaps not as critical, factors).

Nowadays higher levels of focus are required on funding costs, rates and taxes, personal security and transport. Most things are less certain, and your personal ability to deal with support failure matters.

Only once you’ve got that figured can you decide if you like the house.

Those lucky enough to have a job and/or income are able to look after themselves at an individual level, or at least in localised groups. Most aren’t in that fortunate position, but wherever you may find yourself on the spectrum, get prepared for a do-it-yourself economy.

If you’re surviving (barely) on grants or any other form of government assistance, it seems only a matter of time (in the absence of a manifest GDP growth strategy in excess of 5% a year — that’s 50 times our latest growth rate of 0.1%) before the reserves on which the government has chosen to rely run out. It is already asking us to help out, and tempting us to pre-spend our pensions in the “two-pot” scheme. (Don’t do it.)

Once upon a time we had a choice. The high road would have had leadership with foresight and confidence rally the factors of production towards a common goal of shared prosperity, with significant intersections between economic and political power, providing a foundation for broad-based economic prosperity.

We have regrettably taken the low road, and we’ll be brought together instead by the threat of an existential crisis. The leaking, broken, falling apart water infrastructure, compounded by the erratic failure of the electricity supply required to keep what’s left functional, is a clear and present danger that forebodes such a crisis.

Only a tiny proportion of the population (5%) can afford to sink boreholes and install water tanks (with pumps kept operating by generators or inverters). 

I don’t expect any significant, power-changing outcomes at national level from the upcoming election. Maybe next time? We may see some changes at provincial level and hopefully we can build on where progress has already been made.

If we are going to succeed in tackling our infestation of problems, it’s going to have to be together, bottom up, starting at local levels. Choose and empower the right mayor. Don’t look beyond that for now, no grand national schemes.

Successful municipalities will be the key to our rescue — that’s where people can see, feel and be part of making a difference. It’s there, at home, in your street, where you can watch out for, and watch over, each other. WhatsApp groups are the new local governance.

Funding local business, big and small, will liberate us from poverty, unemployment and inequality. Build businesses that people can literally walk to. Take the solution to the people — that’s why Uber works.

For any of this to start happening will require a devolution of power and decision-making, as well as budget determination and funding strategies, to local levels so that parties interested in, and affected by, local good can be given enough freedom to form and govern partnerships in their local best interest — guided and bound by national policy, but not interfered with.

The money will come when the structures and proper oversight are in place. Capital needs to know exactly where it is going and who will be looking after it.

An enabling central function of government, perhaps even a ministry guided by a qualified council, is not being dismissed here. It's just being kept at a safe distance, where it belongs.

The right local leadership structures will cope just fine, thank you, left to their own judgments.

• Barnes is an investment banker with more than 35 years’ experience in various capacities in the financial sector.