Читать книгу The Accidental Mayor - Michael Beaumont - Страница 13
ОглавлениеThe opportunity to take more control over how the city’s budget was spent came with the adjustments budget in February 2017. This was the first chance the multiparty government had to move funds around within a budget approved by the ANC before they were voted out.
This was a crucial moment in Mashaba’s mayoralty and he was dreading it. It marked the first test of whether he could find enough common ground with the EFF and his coalition partners to agree on how the city’s budget should be spent. It was a daunting task because of the probability of six different political parties producing a budget that would secure the support of the EFF while simultaneously addressing their own requirements. The budget had to address the massive expectations for change that had arisen across the city, and, because of the city’s dire revenue situation, such change would have to arise from within a declining financial envelope.
We got to work. Sessions were organised throughout the day and night for nearly two weeks. Through caffeine-fuelled meetings, we were able to identify enough non-essential government programmes and budgets to make the necessary cuts to fund change across the city. When the time came to pass the adjustments budget, we had workshopped our approach extensively with our partners and the EFF. They had made their inputs and, frankly, enriched the pool of change with many ideas of their own. Nevertheless, it was a stressful process.
When the vote took place, the ANC and its partners voted against the budget, and I could see Mashaba watching the EFF out of the corner of his eye. Their hands stayed down. Next came the call for those in favour, and the coalition and EFF raised their hands in unison. It was a massive victory for our programme to deliver change in Johannesburg.
While there is no question that the odds were stacked against us, it became clear that Mashaba was the right man to turn the city around. His ‘business unusual’ approach was starting to pay off. He took joy in witnessing his programme of governance being delivered and in being on the ground with the people and communities benefiting from this work. For him, an event to deliver services was not a photo opportunity or a PR exercise. He wanted to connect with people, bring change to their lives and hear their stories so that the work of government could be informed by their lived realities.
One such initiative was extending the operating hours in more city clinics, following the successful pilot study at the Princess Clinic, where waiting times had come down and every month thousands of patients were able to come in after work to receive treatment or chronic medication. With the adjustments budget in February 2017, Mashaba was able to roll out this programme, a first in South African local government history. By the end of 2019, some 26 clinics had extended their operating hours to serve communities until late at night and over weekends, with plans to expand the project every year until it was standard in every city clinic.
The adjustments budget, in what became known as the ‘no-join policy’, was also used to fix a major problem that affected the Johannesburg road network. Over the years, faulty traffic-light cabling in the most congested city in South Africa had been repaired by simply joining the cables together to fix the faulty section. As any electrician will tell you, a joint in a cable becomes a weak point that will fail whenever you have heavy rain or one of Johannesburg’s impressive summer electrical storms. So a no-join policy was brought into effect, which required the cabling under the busiest traffic intersections across Johannesburg to be dug up and re-cabled. The results soon spoke for themselves, with a 76 per cent reduction in traffic-light downtime and Johannesburg receiving an award for reducing traffic congestion.
Hundreds of millions were ploughed into electrifying informal settlements, providing affordable rental housing and completing over 3000 RDP housing units that had been left unfinished for many years. I can only imagine what it must be like for someone who has been on the waiting list since 1996 to live in an informal settlement overlooking RDP houses that they know will never be completed.
Slovo Park, an informal settlement on the outskirts of the city, had not benefited from post-apartheid government intervention for 21 years, leading residents to approach the courts. As a community they had sued the City of Johannesburg’s previous government and the Gauteng provincial government to provide them with services. In a landmark judgment in 2015, the court had found in their favour and instructed government to intervene and provide services.
When Mashaba entered office, we found that there were no plans to implement this court ruling. So, arising from our engagements with the EFF, Slovo Park was deemed a priority and plans were developed. In early 2017 Mashaba flipped the switch, powering this informal settlement with electricity for the first time. He was invited into the modest home of an elderly resident who had bought a kettle in anticipation of this moment, and she used it to make him a cup of tea. She must have been 80 years old and her weathered face reflected many years of hardship. She wore an ANC-branded doek. While sipping tea together, she turned to Mashaba and said, ‘Do you know, today is the first day that I feel like a human being.’
Imagine surviving the oppression of apartheid, standing in those long, snaking queues in 1994 to vote for the very first time and living in a community named after the great anti-apartheid stalwart Joe Slovo, only to be forced to go to court and sue the new government, 21 years later, to receive the benefits of democracy.
Another major achievement in those early days was the Inner City Rejuvenation Project. Mashaba had identified the vast potential of the inner city of Johannesburg and was convinced that it provided an opportunity to address some of the city’s greatest challenges. He often spoke about turning the inner city into a construction site with a view to building low-cost, affordable accommodation and spaces for small businesses. When he compared the city’s capacity to build a measly 1 500 to 2000 houses per year with the massive potential of the collective balance sheets of the private sector, he realised we could be hitting on a second gold rush.
The inner city had the potential to address the spatial inequality in the metro by providing housing opportunities to people who had lived on the geographic and economic periphery of Johannesburg for decades. These people would typically spend between 40 and 50 per cent of their limited household income on travelling across the city in search of work opportunities. Mashaba wanted to bring them closer to opportunity and create the kind of density in the inner city that would generate the demand required for economic activity to boom around it. The inner city had the added advantage of established infrastructure, which would negate the need for bulk infrastructure installations for new developments on the periphery of Johannesburg.
However, for the inner city to have any chance it needed to be a more attractive environment, a place where people wanted to live, work and play. Mashaba’s anger and disbelief at how previous governments had allowed the inner city to decay into an urban slum were palpable. Filth and lawlessness had taken root.
To begin to tackle the problem, an additional midnight cleaning shift was introduced, at a cost of R50 million, and the inner city began to look a lot cleaner. This went along with a massive increase in the presence of the JMPD, with visible policing almost quadrupling. The inner city still had many challenges, but it was a start that people began to notice. The entire Inner City Rejuvenation Project had its origins in this particular achievement. On the back of this, a vigorous programme of engagement with the private sector in the inner city started to generate confidence.
Our biggest challenge came from the criminal syndicates that had swooped in and hijacked buildings. They were making a fortune by charging people obscene rentals for abhorrent conditions. They had done so with impunity under the lawlessness that had been allowed to manifest for years, and had driven many legitimate property owners out of the inner city. As mentioned earlier, many of their ‘tenants’ were undocumented foreign nationals who had no recourse, given their status, and were vulnerable to this kind of abuse.
Mashaba initiated a programme of raiding these hijacked buildings, using a team set up solely for this purpose within the new forensic unit. He would regularly accompany them on these raids, and he was deeply affected by the most appalling sights. I would often witness his sorrow when returning from a raid. Dozens of people were crammed into small spaces without ablution facilities, in a building with no running water or power, and were charged rentals as high as R1 000 per month. Past attempts to deal with this problem had seen what Mashaba had termed ‘so-called human rights lawyers’ challenging the city’s efforts. It was his belief that these lawyers were in the criminal syndicates’ pockets.
It wasn’t long before the unit started producing results. By the end of 2017, council had approved the release of 84 buildings to the private sector for development into low-cost housing and student accommodation. They were a combination of city-owned properties and hijacked buildings that the city had reclaimed and secured ownership of, either because the outstanding municipal accounts were more than the value of the properties or the city was able to prove to the courts that the owners could not be located. It was a seismic achievement in a country grappling with decades of failed land-redistribution programmes and the prospect of amending the Constitution to allow expropriation without compensation. Mashaba was doing it all within the existing legal framework, at no cost to the state and in an urban environment.
The properties were put out on tender offering long-term lease agreements that kept them in the ownership of the city, but allowed the private sector to unleash their resources, creating world-class opportunities out of disastrous buildings. Along with this came job creation from a booming construction sector and the chance for Mashaba to implement a particular project that had become a focus for him.
Mashaba was well aware that artisan training had collapsed in South Africa. The average age of certified bricklayers, tilers, electricians and plumbers was over 45, with many approaching retirement age. There was simply no upcoming generation of artisans to take their place and government’s artisan training institutions had all but closed. As with so many things, Mashaba viewed the Inner City Rejuvenation Project as an opportunity to address this problem. The city initiated a programme through the University of Johannesburg, which began graduating 200 artisans each year, linked to the inner city project where they would gain the required experience in their newly learnt trades.
Mashaba made a mammoth investment in policing. Safety had become an issue in Johannesburg over the years, and a major driver of disinvestment. The city had deteriorated to the point where illegality was more easily found than a police officer. Mashaba pushed through a massive investment of nearly R200 million in the 2017 adjustments budget to initiate the recruitment of 1 500 additional JMPD officers, effectively increasing the metro police force by 50 per cent. It would take 18 months of training before these cadets could hit the streets of Johannesburg, but it would prove to be one of the greatest investments in the city.
In the meantime, the JMPD started becoming a serious crime-fighting force with the appointment of a new chief of police. In recruiting a chief, Mashaba knew he needed a real cop to establish a real police force. He found his man in David Tembe. Under Tembe’s leadership, the city launched Operation Buya Mthetho (‘bring the law’), a new multi-departmental operation aimed at enforcing by-laws and restoring the rule of law to the city. It addressed anything from illegal connections and building code infringements to environmental and health code violations. Almost overnight the JMPD became a force to be reckoned with, their presence on the streets expanding exponentially and raids occurring daily. Criminals were arrested in numbers never seen before, with more arrests taking place in a single year than the prior five years put together.
Committed to restoring the rule of law in Johannesburg, Mashaba applied himself to leading this task in ways residents had never witnessed in their mayors before. On more evenings than I care to remember, he would don his reflective vest and join the JMPD on their nightly Buya Mthetho raids. And he wasn’t the type to pose for photographic opportunities. He was the first through the door of whatever facility they were raiding; drug dens, brothels, illegal businesses, it didn’t matter. It drove his protectors crazy.
Anyone who chose to focus on the fact that he was a civilian and not a qualified JMPD officer had missed the point. Mashaba, through his efforts to lead from the front, played a key role in galvanising the JMPD under their newly appointed chief of police. Suddenly, metro police officers who had never seen a mayor before were being led through the doors by one. When one of them was hurt or injured, Mashaba was the first to their hospital bed.
I remember one occasion when I gave him the news that a JMPD officer had been shot and killed in the inner city, and that a manhunt was under way for the killer, who was holed up in one of the hijacked buildings nearby. I don’t think I had finished my sentence before he was out the door and on his way to join the efforts.
By the time he arrived, the JMPD had apprehended the suspect and locked him in one of their vehicles. To everyone’s surprise, Mashaba opened the vehicle and climbed in to interrogate him. When he climbed out, he had extracted from the suspect that he was a Mozambican national, in the country illegally. Another failure of national government to protect our borders had allowed a man into our country who had allegedly killed one of our brave JMPD officers.
This was the part about the commentariat’s approach to illegal immigration that riled Mashaba. They approached the subject academically. They were not there when he had to console the sobbing wife of that JMPD officer. They did not see the officer’s lifeless body lying in the street.
Mashaba spent a great deal of time with Operation Buya Mthetho. In one day he would cut off a business and collect a R20-million cheque for illegal connections to municipal services, shut down an illegal shebeen, raid a brothel and tackle a vendor selling expired food products. The programme was a massive success that had to be rapidly expanded.
This important work was backed by newly functioning municipal courts, set up through a funding arrangement with the national Department of Justice. Historically, by-law infringements would not see the light of day in our overburdened criminal justice system. The reintroduction of municipal courts, presided over by a magistrate and run by a team of city-appointed prosecutors, changed all that. By-law infringers began to appear before these courts under threat of arrest for failure to do so.
It began slowly, with a low prosecution rate arising from the need to train JMPD officers in writing citations and to design a new fines book correctly aligned with the magisterial districts, the two main causes of many of the cases being thrown out. The training of officers alone raised the prosecution rate from 4 per cent to over 25 per cent in a matter of weeks. Mashaba hoped to achieve a situation, over time, where the by-laws of the city mattered and were adhered to.
There was one related incident that drew a lot of public attention. Mashaba was not one to switch off his focus on the rule of law when he was off duty. It wasn’t a stunt; it was a necessity. One evening, on his way to a black-tie event, he drove past a man pushing a shopping trolley loaded with cow heads through the streets. The mayor instructed his protectors to stop the car and he proceeded to detain the man and his trolley on the basis that this was a clear violation of the city’s health codes in the handling and transportation of meat products, never mind the health risk to those who would later consume the meat.
The storm that followed his subsequent tweet about the incident was thunderous, with Mashaba being accused of trying to kill small businesses and hurting the livelihood of informal traders. It consumed social media and talk radio for days. He stood his ground, taking the side of the people who would have consumed that meat and potentially fallen ill and had to battle through an overburdened public healthcare system. Many took his side, but ultimately it was the EFF commander in chief, Julius Malema, who defended Mashaba most effectively. At a gathering of informal traders, Malema was unequivocal when he said, ‘It is our mothers and fathers who were going to get sick by eating that meat, and now we want to give this mayor a hard time for what he did. Mashaba was 100 per cent right.’ As would become a pattern, it was the EFF rather than his own party that came to his defence.
Mashaba’s approach to tackling Johannesburg’s drug problem went beyond targeting the dealers. He also initiated the first city-operated drug rehabilitation facilities in the history of Johannesburg. Previously the city had shrugged off the responsibility, citing it as a provincial government competency. Mashaba, like Johannesburg’s residents, didn’t care for passing the buck onto another sphere of government; he wanted action. From his directives, the city launched the very first drug rehabilitation services out of our clinics.
Mashaba was proud when he met a family in Soweto that had benefited from this service. The son was a drug addict and the family had endured all the associated hardships. They would come home to find he had sold their possessions to get his next fix, and they had become the pariahs of their neighbourhood. With the advent of the drug rehabilitation services, the son began to get better and returned to school, and the life of the entire family improved dramatically. The father described the initiative as a godsend. Mashaba offered to finance the son’s efforts to matriculate and proceed to university. As always, he was strong on the requirement that he would continue to finance the son’s education provided his grades reflected a good work ethic.
Mashaba also had the vision to launch the city’s first volunteer campaign. A Re Sebetseng, which is a Sotho term meaning ‘let’s work’, was modelled on the Rwandan Umuganda Day, which was initiated after the horrific genocide of the mid-1990s. On the last Saturday of every month in Rwanda, every citizen, from the lowliest member of society to the president, participates in programmes to better their community and surroundings, including street sweeping, tree planting and repairing public buildings. It’s the law, so participation is not a problem, and wherever you go in Rwanda today, whether Kigali or a rural village, it is clean. More importantly, given its appalling history of neighbour killing neighbour, some regard Rwanda today as one of the most successful African countries with the highest levels of social cohesion.
Mashaba launched A Re Sebetseng in Johannesburg in August 2017. The programme was successful, given that it was not legally mandated, and saw thousands of volunteers engaged in community clean-ups every month. It even had corporate sponsors, including Coca-Cola, Anglo American and Adcock Ingram. A Re Sebetseng was on the verge of being professionalised when we left office. It had been a good amateur production, but one that was on the verge of going pro. There is something to be said for programmes like this that have South Africans working side by side to make their communities and spaces better; for tapping into the spirit of South Africans through volunteerism; and for shifting the extent to which people rely solely on an ineffective or hamstrung government to improve their environment.
It was fascinating in those early days of governing to watch how Mashaba applied himself to the task of turning Johannesburg around. It was clear from the start that his style of leadership informed his business-like approach, and that this approach was key to his success. Where those in government saw a problem that couldn’t be solved, Mashaba saw an opportunity for out-of-the-box thinking. It was invigorating to work alongside him, because we would always have to find a creative way to deliver on his expectations outside of the confines of traditional government thinking.
