Читать книгу The Accidental Mayor - Michael Beaumont - Страница 12

4

Getting started

When he came into office, Mashaba spent the first few weeks contemplating the nature of the minority coalition arrangement. It involved no fewer than seven political parties: the IFP, ACDP, COPE, UDM and FF+, which were to formally partner with the DA, as well as the EFF, which would vote on an issue-by-issue basis, taking each decision on its merits. Every decision of council would therefore require consultation with the EFF. It was a precarious situation in which the smallest issue had the potential to sound the death knell for our government.

The arrangement involved a razor-thin, eight-seat majority in council, the kind that could be undone by a few people needing to visit the bathroom at the same time during a meeting. This kind of coalition could only endure if nurtured by daily engagement.

Critically, Mashaba understood that there was no place for the kind of arrogance that had become commonplace in South African politics. The size of any party in this arrangement, whether a one-seat party or the DA with its 104 seats, was irrelevant. The coalition had rendered every party, irrespective of size, equally important because the DA’s 104 seats meant nothing without at least 32 more votes from the other six parties on any particular decision.

The arrangement with the EFF was the source of the greatest anxiety for Mashaba in those early days. The EFF stood diametrically opposed to the capitalist system that he had spent his whole life publicly championing. This was why Julius Malema had chosen Mashaba as the candidate on whom to hang his ‘however’.

Mashaba winced when he recalled a particular debate during the election campaign that had included then ANC mayor Parks Tau and the EFF’s Floyd Shivambu. During the debate, Mashaba had likened someone leaving the ANC and voting for the EFF to a patient with diarrhoea being prescribed laxatives. At that stage he hadn’t realised the extent to which he would have to rely on the support of the EFF.

How were we going to agree on a budget for Johannesburg when the time came? How would we approach the work of an economic strategy to grow the economy and create jobs? These and other questions flooded my mind, but Mashaba was determined that enough common ground could be achieved.

Mashaba knew he was a relative newcomer to politics, but he adopted the view that politics is not brain surgery. It does not require advanced training in the same way that medicine and engineering do. By operating in good faith, applying common sense and never forgetting the wishes of the people who sought change, he could do the job. And with no time to waste, he got to it.

First came the appointment of his mayoral committee: 10 MMCs who would serve as his cabinet. It was an impressive group. A medical doctor who specialised in public health became the MMC for health and social development. A former head of Johannesburg Water took up the mantle as MMC for environment and infrastructure services. An assistant director of the HIV/AIDS Counsellor Association became the MMC for community development. A specialist in somatology (the practice of improving general wellness) with a PhD in health professions education became the MMC for corporate services. A practising attorney with advanced training in municipal governance became the MMC for public safety. Clearly, Mashaba wanted the right people around him. To fulfil the deal struck by the coalition negotiation teams, he appointed two MMCs from the IFP to oversee the critical portfolios of transport and housing.

One of the immediate challenges facing Mashaba’s government was that we would have to operate under an ANC-approved budget for the first year. Because the election had happened so late, the ANC had already approved the 2016/17 budget for Johannesburg a few weeks before the poll. The incoming multiparty government would have to operate under this ANC-approved budget until June 2017, even though the people of Johannesburg had voted the party out of office.

Mashaba brought together a group, including our coalition partners, and indicated that we needed to develop a clear plan with deliverables. So we came up with a 10-point plan, something we could champion while having to operate under the existing budget.

Broadly, we committed our administration to the following:

1. To work together in a coalition arrangement, based on the recognition that not one party received majority support from the electorate.

2. To run a business-friendly and pro-poor government that would see the majority of our budget being directed to poor communities.

3. To orientate plans and policies towards achieving a minimum of 5 per cent economic growth by 2021, thereby countering unemployment.

4. To create a professional, highly skilled, competent and performance-driven public service.

5. To ensure that corruption was public enemy number one.

6. To complete the official housing waiting list and get it signed off.

7. To identify the number of incomplete houses built by the city and the province where construction had ground to a halt and to complete these projects.

8. To fast-track the handover of title deeds.

9. To launch a pilot project to investigate extending the operating hours of clinics throughout the city.

10. To revive the inner city to bring people and business back to Johannesburg.

The 10-point plan was workshopped with the senior executives of the city, who you could tell weren’t accustomed to seeing a mayor engaged in planning. This was to become our plan for the remainder of that first financial year. It was the most we could do to stamp the multiparty government’s agenda, and our residents’ demands for change, on plans and budgets created by the ANC.

A press conference was called and the 10-point plan was presented to the residents of Johannesburg. It would become the origin of Mashaba’s entire programme of governance. It evolved over time, but its focus was carried through in every budget that followed.

Mashaba had come to appreciate the council-appointed city manager, Dr Trevor Fowler, during those first few months in office, but he knew that we needed someone at the helm of the administration who could do things differently. The council initiated a process to recruit a new city manager, and with the help of a panel we settled on Dr Ndivho Lukhwareni. He impressed the panel in the interview and captured the essence of what we wanted from a leader of the administration to turn the city around.

With our new city manager, we got to work on implementing our first strategic plan. I continued to be surprised by how senior city officials were evidently not used to a hands-on mayor. Knowing Mashaba, it was something they were just going to have to learn to live with.

We immediately began making progress, executing the plan to the point where we were holding daily briefings about our achievements. It demonstrated that we had some excellent civil servants who leapt at their responsibilities and could be relied upon. At the same time, we observed others who found any opportunity to obfuscate, delay or obstruct our efforts to achieve our goals. They soon learnt that Mashaba’s nature and experience in business had taught him not to place blind faith in strangers.

A few weeks after becoming mayor, Mashaba had his first event to hand out title deeds to residents who had been given state-built houses. Some of these people had waited for more than 20 years for their title deeds, which could now provide them and their families with an asset of value. One particular woman, her face weathered by the hardships of a long and unjust life, wept in his arms.

Soon afterwards, Mashaba extended the operating hours of the Princess Clinic near Roodepoort until late at night and on weekends. He took the money from his predecessor’s international travel budget to fund this, as he had no intention of travelling around the world while trying to fix his city.

The informal settlement of Princess had no after-hours emergency health facility anywhere nearby. When Mashaba visited Princess during the election campaign, he met a family whose story moved him. The mother of the family took him by the arm and insisted that he come to see where they lived in a small two-room shack without a water supply. The eldest daughter had contracted tuberculosis and suffered from at least two fits per day. The mother explained to Mashaba how difficult it was to tend to her daughter’s medical needs while holding down the only job in the household, which was needed to put food on the table. It was apparent that this family suffered greatly. Mashaba’s interactions with the Princess residents revealed that many people were afflicted with respiratory illnesses and that access to healthcare was a problem for those who worked.

Extending the operating hours of their clinic was a pilot project to assess the feasibility of rolling out extended hours of service in clinics across the city. It was a huge success. There was an immediate outpouring of relief from residents who normally had to take time out from work to get the medical care they needed. Waiting times were cut in half and stories began to emerge of lives being saved that would have been lost if the clinics had been closed. No mayor had ever taken this approach before, but Mashaba recognised what was required. By the time he left office, municipalities across the country were engaging Johannesburg to replicate this project.

Another development involved the allocation of free water by the city. Our predecessors had allocated the first six kilolitres of water free to every household in Johannesburg. It did not matter whether it was a mansion in wealthy Sandhurst or a small home in Alexandra township. We changed this so that free water was given only to households below a threshold household income. By doing so we managed to increase the amount of free water to 15 kilolitres, while deriving additional revenue from those who could afford to pay for their first six kilolitres. It was a major pro-poor change that benefited hundreds of thousands of poor households, while moving away from universal free water, which is ill advised in a water-constrained environment.

Shortly before his 100 days in office, Mashaba launched the K9 Narcotics Unit of the JMPD, an elite force of metro police officers whose sole focus would be to wage war on the drug trade in Johannesburg. For years the drug trade had wreaked havoc on the city’s youth, feeding off the hopelessness of young people unable to find work. The South African Police Service (SAPS) had collapsed their specialised units, and there was a massive need to tackle the drug trade in the city. Communities had gone from desperate to angry as they witnessed how the police knew where the drug lords and dealers operated and yet failed to make arrests. When the odd arrest did take place, it was never long before the police docket disappeared and the dealers were back on the streets plying their deadly trade. And no one had ever done anything about it. The launch of the K9 Narcotics Unit represented the first real effort of the city to wage this much-needed war and the results began to roll in quickly.

Nearly every day in the first few weeks of his mayoralty, people came into Mashaba’s office with cases of government fraud and corruption. They had been sent from pillar to post under previous administrations, being ignored if they were lucky or victimised if they weren’t. Mashaba knew that corruption was a massive problem in the city he had inherited, but nothing could have prepared us for what started coming out. He began a process to locate the best person to head up a new forensic unit that would investigate these cases and ensure that wrongdoers were hunted down and punished.

Mashaba hated the fact that South African politicians plundered with impunity and then returned to communities with empty hands, saying there wasn’t enough money to meet their needs. In political circles, corruption was regarded as an efficiency loss that had to be lived with, but Mashaba wasn’t a politician. We did some investigation to locate a person with the integrity and ruthlessness required for the job. One name came back: General Shadrack Sibiya.

A former major general, Sibiya had had a distinguished career in the police. On 9 November 2016, Mashaba appointed him head of the city’s new Group Forensic and Investigation Service, tasked with investigating and rooting out corruption in government. At the time, no one could have imagined what this team would uncover in Johannesburg.

On 1 December 2016, Mashaba delivered a speech marking his 100 days in office, to report on progress achieved under the multiparty government. He spoke passionately of his commitment to rejuvenating the inner city of Johannesburg and converting it into a construction site. From the rubble, Mashaba said, we would raise a new inner city that would become a space for affordable housing and small business. He outlined how nearly every element of the 10-point plan had already been achieved. The city, for the first time, was moving in the right direction and it was being noticed.

My team and I watched from a distance, observing the response from the audience. We were encouraged as each statement was met with rapturous applause. His message was also well received by the media, who were beginning to warm to his mayoralty.

But the speech was not without controversy. Mashaba spoke about abandoned buildings in the inner city that had been hijacked by criminal syndicates and rented out, mainly to undocumented foreign nationals who had no other option. He had visited a number of these buildings and the conditions were deplorable. People were crammed into tiny spaces, without any electricity, water or toilets. Drugs and child prostitution flourished. In his speech, Mashaba referred to the ‘so-called human rights lawyers’ who fought against any effort by government to wrest control of the hijacked buildings from the slumlords of the city.

In the press conference that followed, a journalist from Power FM asked Mashaba what our efforts to fight crime meant for illegal foreigners. His answer was simple: ‘A criminal is a criminal.’ I saw all signs of joy disappear from the face of our then communications director, Tony Taverna-Turisan.

What followed was a week of some of the worst abuse I have ever witnessed in my political career, as one commentator after the next lined up to label Mashaba as xenophobic, afrophobic, populist and an instigator of violence against foreigners. The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) initiated an investigation into his remarks, and groups of protestors, organised by the ANC, began marching to our office every day.

Mashaba stuck to his guns. ‘If you are in this country illegally, you have broken our laws.’ He qualified this by saying, ‘I want the world to come to Johannesburg, to work, holiday and visit. But they must come here legally and once here, they must obey our laws.’ On this he refused to back down, despite the mounting pressure.

Mashaba had gone where angels, let alone South African politicians, feared to tread. Previously, any politician who’d dared speak about illegal immigration had either swiftly apologised or claimed their remarks had been taken out of context. Not Mashaba.

And why shouldn’t we talk about a problem that represents one of the greatest challenges to service delivery and the rule of law? By suggesting that we enforce our laws, which are widely heralded as progressive, are we really fuelling xenophobic violence? How can we seriously talk about the economy and the rule of law without addressing this issue?

What followed was an exhaustive programme of interviews. Mashaba responded to every media query, every attack and every interview request around the clock for a week and, importantly, he held the line. Over and over again he said, ‘I want every person in the world to visit Johannesburg, but they must come here legally and obey our laws.’ Journalists and talk-show hosts asked him: ‘Aren’t you stoking xenophobic outbreaks of violence?’ and ‘What do you have against foreigners?’ He kept his cool each time, insisting there are laws in our country and suggesting to the interviewers that perhaps their issue lay with the laws and lawmakers themselves, or perhaps they believed certain laws ought to be ignored.

But then, something interesting started to happen. Everywhere Mashaba went, ordinary South Africans would stop him in the street and say, ‘We are with you, you are right’ and ‘Thank God you were brave enough to say it’ and ‘Ignore them, they must come to Hillbrow and say it’s not a problem.’ It became a groundswell of ordinary people, from all walks of life, demonstrating how out of touch the country’s commentariat was with the views of the people.