South Africa’s local government elections: in the toilet

Free State, May 18th 2011

When the African National Congress (ANC) mayor in the small town of Viljoenskroon in South Africa’s Free State province let an untendered sanitation contract for the local black township to a company owned by her and her husband black she may never have anticipated the political storm that would follow. The toilets were constructed but no outhouses were built around them for their users—an indignity that has now received nation wide public acknowledgement. But the “loo with a view” controversey, a minor scandal, has become an unlikely political symbol in South Africa’s local elections and the tip of the iceberg for the type of problems that plague local service delivery amid fraud, cronyism and incompetence.

Seventeen years after the end of Apartheid the ruling from the ruling ANC party remains politically dominant and runs the vast majority of local councils in the country. As the party of liberation it is unassailable although the quality of its local management and service delivery is now acknowleged to be appalling. A steady drip of scandal and malfeasance over the years has chipped away at its once invincible moral authority and, in the months leading to the elections, massive failure in service delivery has become the dominant electoral issue. Evidence of waste, mismanagement, nepotism, and corruption have all come to the fore: bridges and school buildings built by companies owned by ANC politicians that fail or are unsafe, municipal governments unable to account for their budgets or manage their responsibilities with the result that major roads have become impassable due to lack of maintenance while household water in cities is unsafe or unavailable.

Much of this sorry record is traced, sadly, to the door of the ANC. Local government is run not by an impartial professional civil service but by highly politicised structures involving party members and supporters at local level and “deployed cadres” appointed by the party from the centre. The other toxic addition to government maladministration is the rampant conflict of interest that has emerged from contracting for supplies and services. Operating under South Africa’s—much needed but badly executed—black economic empowerment (BEE) programme that requires all government business to be conducted with companies owned or partially owned by previously “racially disadvantaged” groups, scores of ANC members from ministers on down to local councillors and civil servants are heavily involved in running companies delivering government services and infrastructure.


Although the principle of BEE is widely supported—some 80% of businesses in South Africa are still owned and operated by whites—practice is seriously compromised. Rather than empowering emergent black businesses, BEE is more often a lucrative sideline for “tenderpreneurs”—well-off officials, their relatives or other politically connected people. Few legitimate busnesses have emerged from the process which has become a massive drain on public finances and competent service delivery.

At the other end of the scale from the cronyism of local government contracts are the BEE entrepreneurs, a massively wealthy layer of black owned companies that have attached themselves to South Africa’s largest corporations, generally owning a minority stake in return for the political cover they bestow. There is even a “BEE index” providing the seal of approval that a company is BEE compliant. Many such BEE enterprises are, in economic terms, “rent-seeking” bodies that extract revenue from business and government transactions. They do not add value in terms of wealth creation or management skills, but do benefit an ANC aligned black economic elite which is merging with the political elite. One observer, Moeletsi Mbeki, an acerbic academic and brother of the now deposed ANC president Thabo Mbeki, has blamed BEE policies for creating an entitlement culture saying their main lesson is that black businessmen do not need to work to build companies because “the white man will give them to you for free”.

He has also discerned one purpose of such companies in creating a new and protective layer of black business with a stake in capitalism that will forestall more radical economic policies involving nationalisation and redistribution, policy options that have long existed inside the ANC and are backed by its coalition of organised labour, Marxists and, more recently, radical populists. Among the latter is the young extremist politican Julius Malema, who has advocated nationalising the mines, seizing farms without compensation and regularly uses racially inflamatory language to refer to whites, resurecting an old liberation song that advocates they be shot.

Mr Malema, a much feared but rising ANC politician who has led study tours of Zimbabwe and Venezuela to learn from their economic policies, may be the man of the future. By openly playing the race card and calling for radical redistribution he gives voice to the anger and resentments that are still widely shared after the end of Apartheid. Some whites say privately that although he represents all that they may—and should—fear he is the most honest politician in South Africa.

At the other end from the radical populism that bubbles within and beneath the ANC are its more pragmatic and, in actual policy terms, dominant voices—those that know the future of a prosperous and peaceful South Africa lies with responsible policies that will attract foreign investment, grow the economy, reduce poverty and uplift its core constituency, the black majority who remain, by any measure, extremely poor. But South Africa’s ANC government now has a major disconnect between its moderate technocrats who largely run the country versus the radical demands from its own grass roots.

The temptations of populism and racially charged rhetoric are powerful: the party must make room for the voices of radicals such as Mr Malema and the class of BEE entrepreneurs with a taste for acquisition, either involving the blue chip listed BEE companies and, further down, those at the local government level with their foot on the first rung of the empowerment ladder through government contracting. At some level the interests of both groups may fuse as the need grows for resources and “deal flow” to fuel empowerment and cronyism, now a dominant means of political control for the ANC and its members.

Belatedly the ANC has acknowledged that its BEE policies have been abused and become a vehicle for enrichment. A much needed policy review has been promised although the party and its members are so compromised that substantive change is unlikely. More directly, the rot that now affects the party concerns its role as an avenue to economic power. As in much of Africa, the ruling party is a careerist organisation that people join to climb the ladder to wealth and affluence. This is apparent in the current local elections where candidate nominations were bitterly, even violently, contested. Some commentators and supporters have chastised the ANC for straying from its—excelent—historical record of service and sacrifice toward the current record of self-interst and enrichment.

The local election campaign has crystalised political choices. The ANC has been challenged over bread and butter issues of service delivery where, even its most fervent supporters agree, its record is dreadful. But South Africans still vote, largely, on racial lines. Most, but not all, blacks support the ANC as the party that delivered freedom and represents their interests and views. Most whites and other minorities, the Indians and coloureds—the latter mixed race Afrikaans speaking people—have moved to the Democratic Alliance (DA), a gutsy and vibrant party that has exposed official corruption and incompetence. In the towns and cities it controls the DA has won recognition for competent management. Its campaign is framed around this issue, encapsulated in the slogan: “we deliver for all”. On this basis the party has attracted an increasing number of black supporters and is desperate to broaden and transform itself but is still saddled with the perception that it is the white party. ANC campaigners have latched on to this, calling blacks who vote DA garden boys and tea ladies.

For black South Africans the choice of the DA vs the ANC is between the powerful old loyalties of South Africa’s “struggle politics” versus the siren song of the DA about managerial competence. Many admit it is a choice that is difficult and wrenching; to turn ones back on a party with whom such a strong bond of solidarity and even identity exists when it disappoints so badly on inescapable, every day issues—water, sanitation and roads? This is not an easy thing to decide.

I’ve set out to answer that question today in the small dusty farming town of Ficksrus—Afrikaans for Fick’s Rest—located in the rolling plains of the eastern Free State. After a few weeks spent renovating a derelict farmhouse on a massive farm outside town that is 15 km across, I realise that almost the only people I know are whites and I don’t really have much contact with the local township. The only black South Africans I do know are the guys working in my construction crew and who have been teaching me a few words of seSotho every day. One of them has asked for the day off to serve as an election observer for a political party. I am curious to know which party that is but didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask. When Nicholas meets me in town on election day the answer is stated clearly enough—he arrives wearing a bright blue DA T-shirt with a snappy rainbow logo. Why is he not supporting the ANC?

I used to be ANC but now I’m disapointed. Nothing they run works properly here. We don’t have functioning services most of the time, there are no jobs and the roads are getting worse,


he says, gesturing down at the heavily pot holed street we are walking across in downtown Ficksrus. The ANC people who are in charge here give jobs and government houses to their relatives and friends. You can’t get anything done without them and they don’t do their jobs. They are the people benefiting not us. I support the DA because they will deliver good services and stop this.

Walking into a butcher shop, run by a kindly Afrikaner, the owner greets us warmly and serves what we are here for: biltong—the local beef jerky that is a staple snack food of South Africa. Who is he supporting in this election

I am for the DA as the party that can run things. I don’t care who they have do it, black or white. This isn’t a race issue—these are my neighours and my customers. What is wrong with choosing the party that will do the job competently? We don’t have proper services here in town and I am right to be disappointed with that. Half the time we don’t have running water in our homes because the town’s supply has broken down, and then the council brings it in by tanker truck from, 50km away, at huge cost.

This is the viewpoint of most whites here, an almost entirely Afrikaner community—this writer is the only native English speaker for miles. If one looks past the old stereotypes of the Free State as a cradle of Apartheid and bastion of hardline white conservatisim you will find among these people, most of them of modest means or struggling, a strongly pragmatic, colour-blind desire to get on with things. These are the people who live among and work with their fellow black South Africans every day, speak seSotho fluently and have more intimate dealings with the South African reality than far more sophisticated and liberal urban people, white or black.

Even among whites with whom one can find borderline, even explicitly, racist attitudes, there is still a pragmatic approach to most things: they don’t want trouble and, on a personal level, are generally respectful to and have good relations with their black neighbours and employees. These people are politically powerless now and, with the passing of Aparthied, have actually been politically rehabilitated. The ANC openly courts the Afrikaner community seeing in them a legitimately African people that are committed to living in this country. The whites the ANC has a far harder time with are urban English speaking liberals, the people most likely to be lecturing it about democratic governance, incompetence or corruption. Among Afrikaners there is a far more practical desire to simply establish the conditions under which they can be allowed to go on living in this country; there is no where else for them to go, or that they would wish to go to.

Further to the right of the DA, politically, is the Freedom Front, an explicitly white and racially conservative party. As a small minority of an ethnic minority, it doesn’t get much support but, under South Africa’s proportional representation system does have a few elected seats in local councils and in parliament. The Freedom Front represents the rump of white conservatism and although its leaders are often well spoken, even moderate in speech and policy, it is acknowledged that their supporters are more likely to be die-hard racists. But South Africa, the diverse rainbow nation, allows them a voice. It is actually one of the quiet victories of South Africa’s negotiated end to white minority rule that such people have agreed to direct their political energies through an elected party rather than taking up arms or planting bombs. The ANC knows that also and maintains a quietly respectful dialogue with the party and its members. The Freedom Front is actually in coalition with the ANC and in cabinet holds the deputy agriculture portfolio.

Although there are Freedom Front posters around Ficksrus today, I haven’t met any supporters, or at least anyone who will admit to it: to be racist is déclassé. Further along the street from the butcher is a panel beaters’ shop. The proprieter is a young Afrikanner who fixed the badly dented rim of my rental car’s tire earlier this week—blown out after hitting a pot hole while driving on a main road, something which has made driving at night a hazard. He is, he tells me, not voting.

Why? My vote will not make a difference. The same people will get elected and nothing will change. What are the problems here? Look around! The streets and roads here didn’t use to be full of potholes—road maintenance has basically stopped. We don’t even have running water here most of the time.

After this disgruntled white opinion it is time for input from the other side. A beat up white bakkie—South Africa’s ubiquitous pick up truck—covered in ANC stickers and sporting a party flag pulls up and two elderly men get out. The driver I know to run a kind of rural taxi service and is suspected by some farmers to probably have some knowledge of the livestock rustling and other nefarious activities in the area but, as with small rural communities where everyone knows everyone, has cordial relations with all the same people. When I introduce myself and ask about the election his passenger replies:

“I am Umkhonto we Sizwe! MK! I was based in Uganda during the struggle. The ANC is my party. There is no one else”.

This man is a veteran of the liberation struggle, a retired member of the ANC’s Apartheid figthting military wing, there is no doubt about his loyalties. But his manner is kindly, not aggressive, and he leaves me with a proud smile. As we move on Nicholas says:

He is retired, he has a pension. Of course he is happy! How about us young people?

Matlwang, the local black township, is Ficksrus’ satellite city and, as a reminder of the old Apartheid geography, is physically removed from town, reached down a long deserted road and across a main road. At night it is unmistakeable—illuminated by four über-bright street lights mounted atop gigantic 100m tall steel utility polls at each corner of the settlement, another residual public order reminder from the Apartheid era.

Heading there I am reminded that political violence is a tradition in South Africa, the country that invented “necklacing”—burning political opponents to death with gasoline and old rubber tyres around their necks. Last week I had to turn back when driving into Matlwang after coming to a road block being set up with piles of rocks and tires. But this has been a largely peaceful election by South African standards—there have been “only” 32 political assassinations so far in the campaign.

I do not know Matlwang. After 3 weeks in the area I have only been on its outskirts; I am not scared of it, but I am not familiar with it either. Entering what my black friends universally call “the location” the first signs of political activity are a polling station surounded by a permiter of plastic ribbon beyond which party observers have set up their own stations. The first is staffed by a man sitting next to an old car and with a poster leaning against it from COPE, or Congress of the People—an ANC splinter group that broke away in 2008 amid factional and political grievances. At one point Cope was seen as a viable alternative and a government in waiting but is now reduced to near irrelevance. It is the party of disgruntled former ANC people.

I used to support the ANC, I voted for them in the first 3 elections. The ANC people who have been elected here benefit themselves and their relatives, for jobs, for houses, for everything! And nothing works. I would like to build my own house—I have been registered to receive an unserviced plot of land since 1998, for 13 years! All they have to do is follow the urban planning survey and complete the registration. I may end up just buying some land in town, in town, in Ficksrus; it will cost me more money but at least I can get it done, I will grow old waiting for the ANC council. I went to Cope because I am disgusted. No, there is no real political and other violence here, I have not been threatened or beaten up, but there are insults and hostile comments. They don’t like it that we are challenging them. Those people have anger in their hearts and believe they have a right to rule forever. But my main issue is that they don’t run this place well and we have to suffer for it.

Approaching a group of youths with ANC flags I ask them how they are feeling about the election. They feel fine about it. There are no problems here. No, they don’t have opinions either. This is not a hostile exchange but has an obviously scripted quality, as if they have been told what to say—nothing. As the only white guy walking around I am conspicuous; my presence has been noted: I am the foreign journalist. Wearing jeans, a black leather jacket, white converse low cuts and sun glasses, I don’t look local and everyone here knows it. Across the road there is an ANC station, a table covered in party brochures and staffed by T-shirt clad party officials. In front of them a tall young man wrapped in an ANC flag is pacing up and down in agitation and, as I approach, he begins a little speech which, for my obvious benefit, is in English:

Comrades! There is a foreign journalist here! You must not speak to him! He does not need to know what is going on here. He is not one of us!

I feel more amused than threatened by this dogmatic, overtly hostile, greeting and when I attempt to engage and explain who I am, he rebuffs my offered hand and points me away.

Nothing could more illustrate the changed outlook of the ANC after 17 years in power than this awkward exchange. The ANC, the party of popular protest, and which benefited from the support and solidarity of the international community during the struggle against Apartheid is, now, the party of power—it is the government and the establishment it once eschewed and feels hard done by from media criticism, even preparing draconian new press law that will curtail media freedoms. It is also now running on an appalling administrative record that, if it is not proud of, at least defensive about. Having emerged as a community-based organisation the ANC now has an often hostile relationship with civil society—that is the independent media, civil rights and advocacy organisations, anti-corruption campaigners and all the rest of the cacophony of an open society. This is far removed from its origins.

In 1985 I was a first year student at McGill University in Montreal and a member of the campus anti-Apartheid movement. We organised protests, lobbied—successfully—for the University to divest of any company doing business with South Africa, sponsored speakers from the ANC to address rallies and seminars, thought that we were helping make history as the supporters of a righteous cause. The anti-Apartheid movement was, indeed, one of the great, unambiguously correct moral issues of our time—a cause that channelled all that was noble in the human spirit, inspired many and, ultimately, helped deliver freedom for an oppressed people. The negotiated end to white minority rule and peaceful transition to one man one vote democracy that delivered the ANC to power is the centre point of the South African miracle.

The ANC’s subsequent record, particularly for the first decade, has been broadly positive. South Africa is a vibrant democracy and open society and millions have benefited from the ending of racial barriers to government services and economic and political participation. But the ANC is also now riddled with entitlement and inefficiency. The perception of local decline is something inescapable to visitors and residents alike—South Africa is on the track toward becoming a more typical African country. Government departments and public governance are, slowly, faltering—something that does not take sophisticated measurement to discern, from potholed streets to failing services. In its haste for “transformation” of the hated white power structure it inherited, the ANC cleared out most levels of civil service management, replacing them with its own people. They are not always the best qualified people; South Africa still experiences an enormous skills deficit. With the private sector desperate to achieve BEE employment equity requirements, skilled black South Africans are readily snapped up and promoted up the management ladder by large companies. The state sector, with its lower salaries, administrative problems and low morale, is not the destination of the best and brightest.

In fairness, the ANC’s record is of mounting a huge increase in delivery of basic social and infrastructure services to address the backlog and inquality from the Apartheid era. Much has been accomplished and credit is deserved for the hundreds of thousands of houses built and the increases in access to water, power and other basic services for millions of people. But the issue now is the appalling waste, mismanagement and graft that now characterise that enterprise.

One obvious rejoinder is that white rule was also characterised by waste and cronyism. Apartheid itself, an economic inefficiency as well as a moral abomination, included corruption in the then ruling National Party, which also sidelined competent, English speaking officials, who then dominated the state service, and promoted its own people. Apartheid was explicitly created to serve that purpose: uplifting poor Afrikaners. It took 46 years to achieve that, from 1948 to 1994, before whites felt confident and prosperous enough to relinquish control. Should the ANC not be forgiven for looking out, primarily, for its own people?

The other response to white disgruntlement and the generally sour mood in the country is to recall that South Africa is an infinitely happier, economically efficient and prosperous place now than at any time under the ghastly Apartheid period. Freed from global isolation and the costs of a garrison state at home there is now far greater affluence in South Africa. Business people and commercial farmers will all admit that the past 15 years have been a time of unprecedented prosperity. Also over with is the open opression and civil conflict at home and destructive wars in the southern African region that marked the last 20 years of minority rule.

South Africans and the ANC have much to be grateful for: this divided but gifted, sometimes tragic, nation has been welded into a vibrant, if fisparous, democracy. A strong market economy with world beating multinationals and talent that preserves prosperity and delivers growth and poverty reduction remains in place. The government has executed a massive increase in service delivery to those disadvantaged by Apartheid. It has also had to do this through the creaky machinery of local government and other state bodies, the very institutions whose capabilities are in decline.


The danger for South Africa is that a toxic mix of failure and corruption in governent services weakens the ANC enough politically that it is pushed toward radical populism in order to keep power and distribute more resources and assets to its members and supporters. Already this election, in which the government felt challenged, has seen the ANC resurrecting racially charged rhetoric and reminding voters of the horrors of Apartheid, as if this was in danger of returning. In discarding its proud, founding, principles of non-racialism it has become a more explicitly African and nationalist party. Mixed race people, Indians and white liberals who previously supported the ANC have largely fled to the DA in this water shed election. South Africa is now more racially polarised than at any time since the end of Apartheid.

Near the end of the day back on the farm that is now my home, I am heading to a rural polling station that is on a farm school some miles away. The farmers I meet there will, like most white people, support the DA. They admire its leader, Helen Zille, an energetic Xhosa speaking former journalist and anti-Apartheid activist, and respect the party’s record of competence and integrity. Their vote will have little effect—we are in a solidly ANC area and which will win again easily, with over 60% of the vote. Nationwide 5% of black South Africans will opt for the DA.

The polling station is located in a small one room school house and the long shadows of a waning mid winter sun are playing across the land. There are two policemen outside joking easily with a man in an ANC t-shirt and inside the chief returning officer, a crisp and competent woman, is running her voting station with a steady hand.

It is not easy mounting an election in any developing country. Many tens of thousands of voting stations, such as this one located on a farm many miles from town, have to be staffed and organised in every remote corner of the country, in addition to ballot counting, and being a neutral arbiter of political activity. By all acounts this was a successful, well organised election; South Africans have peacefully exercised their democratic rights, the vote is fair. Here at this station the voting is calm and orderly, the party observers are sitting quietly. I walk up to the chief returning officer and say that she and her staff have much to be proud of.

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