The term “service delivery protest” is the greatest journalistic labour-saving device of the decade, and represents a misunderstanding of democracy.
The term “service delivery protest” is the greatest journalistic labour-saving device of the decade, and represents a misunderstanding of democracy.
This is according to Rhodes University Professor Steven Friedman, who recently delivered a lecture on 'Phrases we often hear and use which undermine democracy'.
Based at the University of Johannesburg, where he runs a joint Rhodes-UJ project, he had come down for a day, courtesy of the politics department, to talk at the School of Journalism and Media Studies.
Friedman had missed our very own university service delivery protest, headed by the vice-chancellor and a young woman student clad in little but a bath towel.
This helped Grahamstown make national TV news for our recurring water outages, but interestingly, no news media I saw described the dignified march of top academics in their robes as a “service delivery protest”.
Had they burned a few tyres or did the toyi-toyi, that might have attracted the phrase.
Friedman’s point is that the way the term is used turns the democratic process of the municipal government listening to, and meeting the wishes of citizens, into a patronage process of handing out goodies.
Governing then becomes a technical and managerial process, rather than a democratic one.
He believes that what people engaging in such protests really want is to be heard and be treated as human, which an emphasis on managerial processes subverts.
Calls for “accountability” are equally unhelpful unless there is a change of the guard. In other words, new councillors must be voted in, not on the basis of what national political party they support but in the hope that they will be more effective in listening to what people want and making it happen.
Part of that democratic process is surely also information from the municipality.
What has been most frustrating about the water outages here is not only the time-draining act of having to arrange alternative water sources and bathing. It is not knowing when the water service will return.
Thanks to being on the university email list, I received regular updates from Dr Iain L'Ange, executive director of Rhodes Infrastructure, Operations & Finance, who interacted with the municipality during the outage.
Had I been an ordinary middle-class resident I might have turned to the web.
A glance at the municipality’s brand-new website during the first phase of the outage revealed nothing, though by 16 August it had the good news that the broken pump was working and steps were being taken to ensure the flow of water continued.
The website, which has been updated into a smart, modern source of facts and figures, also carries an apology from the Municipal Manager, Pravine Naidoo, for the inconvenience. Naidoo is making a visible difference, though he has not been in office long enough to turn everything around.
Full marks to the Makana website for carrying the monthly “Section 71 report” on Makana’s municipal spending for July 2013, one month of the new financial year. This is information the municipality must supply to central government. Spending and revenue seem to be on track, but one month is not enough to make a judgment.
However, a look at the Section 71 report for the whole of the financial year just past, which is available on the national treasury website, is more revealing.
I have written that Makana’s problems may be part of a national trend of underspending the capital budget. The last quarter figures for Makana published by the Treasury recently turn this idea on its head.
For the 2012/13 municipal financial year just past, Makana overspent its capital budget by 15%. This doesn’t mean it owes anything. The full amount was provided by national and provincial government.
And it should be good news.
Alas, a close look at the figures shows the capital budget for water was underspent, at R43 million for the full year (by around 30%) and the capital budget for electricity at R6m (around 40%).
Most of the capital overspending for the year is accounted for by Sport and Recreation Department spending. Makana spent around R32m, or 80 times the amount budgeted, on sports and recreation.
The R15m actually spent on road transport was only five times the amount budgeted.
This needs explanation from the municipality, and that is exactly what our political leaders have to do, no matter how common sense this spending seems to them.
While they’re at it, the municipality can explain why the operating budget was overspent by almost 44%, leaving the municipality with a deficit for the year of almost R50m and how this is to be funded.
There was supposed to be a R24m surplus, which was to come from a capital transfer of around R30m. That transfer has not happened, but this still leaves R20m or so unexplained.
