Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi’s state of the province address this week provided tangible reasons why the ANC is on its last legs in SA’s most populous province.
The address was mostly a sad indictment of ANC-led municipalities across the province. In it Lesufi coined a new term, “G13”, to describe the crisis Gauteng residents face daily. It would be tragic if it were not so farcical.
G13 refers to the 13 — yes, 13 — intractable challenges Gauteng faces, from crime to potholes, hijacked infrastructure, drug abuse, a failing health system and substandard education.
Sadly, the solutions to these problems proposed by the premier were mainly gimmicks, lacking a crucial ingredient — the need to go back to the basics of good governance as opposed to public relations stunts.
For instance, instead of fancy helicopters and expensive Hilux bakkies, why not work with the SA Police to ensure more boots on the ground to fight crime? On the education front, Lesufi has advocated for the introduction of Swahili and Mandarin in Gauteng schools, while the province is facing a dire shortage of actual schools, as he admitted in his address.
Instead of shifting responsibility for the water crisis to national government, why not work with municipalities to ensure they channel their budgets to the essential maintenance so they don’t lose almost half of their pumped water to leaks?
Lesufi played a crucial role in the ANC taking over the province’s metros in the aftermath of the 2021 local election, but under his chosen leadership in the big cities the water crisis is worsening. In October water minister Pemmy Majodina described the crisis in Gauteng as “self-inflicted”, saying “political will” was required to resolve the crisis.
“We met all municipalities of Gauteng, the premier, as well as the [department of co-operative governance & traditional affairs] in Gauteng to alert them that soon Gauteng will be running out of water,” Majodina said at the time.
“We [the department] met for the second time … we started restrictions on September 18, we met more than three times to check if there is a change. Unfortunately chair, we have to be honest, there is no change in terms of Gauteng doing the right thing.”
Yet in his address Lesufi insisted Gauteng’s water problems were not the “competence” of the provincial government, though he apologised to the province’s residents for having to put up with a “Stone Age problem”.
Lesufi said 10 hijacked buildings have been reclaimed in Johannesburg, yet there are dozens of others that are hijacked on a near daily basis, under his nose.
The highlight of the premier’s address on the economic front centred on the expansion of the Tshwane Automotive Special Economic Zone (Tasez). The project is entering its second phase. Lesufi said the first phase resulted in investment of more than R26bn and created more than 8,000 jobs, 3,300 permanent, and about 229 small and medium enterprises benefit from R1.7bn in procurement opportunities.
That is an achievement, but Lesufi and his team cannot take the credit. The Tasez was a project initiated under his predecessor, David Makhura, with trade & industry minister Parks Tau, who was head of economic development in the province at the time.
Earlier this week the ANC’s national leadership overhauled the party’s Gauteng provincial executive committee, axing provincial secretary TK Nciza and head of elections Lebogang Maile in a far-reaching shake-up.
The provincial ANC will now be led by former Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo as its task team convener, with Lesufi as his co-convener. Nciza has been replaced by former provincial secretary Hope Papo as co-ordinator. Papo’s task will be to rebuild party structures across the province that under Lesufi and Nciza have become deeply factionalised.
The overhaul is meant to arrest the ANC’s rapid decline in electoral support in Gauteng — it obtained just 35% in the 2024 election after scraping a majority of the votes — 51% — in 2019. While former president Jacob Zuma’s MK party obtained 9% in Gauteng in its inaugural election in the province last year, the decline in the ANC’s electoral support in Gauteng over a number of election cycles from 2014 indicates that there is deep unhappiness over its running of the province.
Residents are now wise to gimmicks and public relations stunts performed by Lesufi and the ANC-controlled Gauteng metros, which have magically begun cleaning curbs, cutting lawns and repairing potholes in some areas as next year’s municipal elections loom.
The ANC national leadership is really just fiddling at the fringes, despite the Gauteng overhaul. The only way for it to regain lost ground is to govern effectively. If a party on a losing streak can’t see that, there is no hope for it.
• Marrian is Business Day editor-at-large.
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