In the midst of the worsening service delivery crisis in the metro I have, on behalf of Abantu Integrity Movement (AIM), forwarded communication to Vincent Magwenya, spokesperson for the presidency.
Magwenya’s primary responsibility in government is to communicate the president’s official position on a whole range of issues that are of interest to the public.
On any given topic, the president obviously receives detailed briefings from a whole number of internal sources.
It, as we understand it, is Magwenya’s job to refine the final public messaging to the media in a manner that will enable the president to come across as well-informed.
On his recent visit to Nelson Mandela Bay, President Cyril Ramaphosa caused a fair amount of public consternation with remarks he made to the media about the state of the metro.
He was mocked on social media for being out of touch.
Among other overly complimentary remarks, he said in front of television cameras that councillor Babalwa Lobishe was “doing very well” as mayor.
She was “stabilising the metro”.
It hurts the president’s credibility when he speaks in public in a manner that suggests that he is either not well-informed about the situation on the ground or is deliberately being economical with the truth for political expediency.
It is not the lived experience of the residents and business community of Nelson Mandela Bay that Lobishe is doing a good job.
She is the captain of a sinking ship.
This is a mayor who failed to respond to six letters from the portfolio committee on co-operative governance and traditional affairs, inviting her to parliament to account for severe governance failures and mismanagement of public funds in the municipality.
This is a mayor who has been taken to the high court by her own council for an irregular commercial transaction she entered into on behalf of the municipality without the necessary approvals.
She is also facing a motion of no confidence in the next council meeting, for the third time this year.
Contrary to the gushing praise of the mayor by the president, the lived reality in our metro is that of collapsing infrastructure and daily water and power outages.
On top of all the setbacks, the current conditions also inhibit economic recovery in a community which is already ravaged by the consequences of a high unemployment rate.
Business owners have been known to relocate their investments to other localities when they are forced to struggle with unreliable municipal services.
As the saying goes, you can’t fix a problem if you are in denial about its existence.
Last year, the president dispatched a so-called presidential working group to Johannesburg to assist their distressed municipality to fix potholes and keep traffic lights working.
That high-level multi-stakeholder working group was a collaborative rescue initiative operating across specialised work streams, most importantly also harnessing the expertise of civil society and private sector role players.
According to some accounts it had a positive impact.
The difference, of course, is that the president was candid in admitting publicly that Johannesburg city was in a terrible state and something extraordinary had to be done to assist the municipality to turn the situation around.
It is very concerning that we are not hearing the same tone from the president about equally-distressed Nelson Mandela Bay, where infrastructure collapse is symbolised by the city’s flagship beach, the venue of international watersports events, being swamped by a deluge of raw sewage on a number of occasions.
Last week, the SA Human Rights Commission issued a report warning that the persistent pattern of sewage spills and wastewater infrastructure failures in the metro undermined residents’ constitutional rights to dignity and a healthy environment.
Instead of undeserved effusive praise for the mayor, a Johannesburg-type of working group intervention is what is required to stem the collapse of service delivery in our municipality.
I am confident Magwenya will, for his own sake as the man responsible for articulating the president’s positions, take the opportunity to familiarise himself with our situation of hardship here in Nelson Mandela Bay.
He would do well also to help the president to speak in more realistic terms about the condition of our metro when he next visits our shores.
Councillor Khusta Jack, Abantu Integrity Movement, Nelson Mandela Bay
