Something extraordinary happened to politics in Makana Municipality this week. Here's how it went. Our reporters sharpened their pencils, pocketed their notebooks and set off for this week's flurry of municipal IDP consultative meetings.
Something extraordinary happened to politics in Makana Municipality this week. Here's how it went. Our reporters sharpened their pencils, pocketed their notebooks and set off for this week's flurry of municipal IDP consultative meetings.
These Integrated Development Plan meetings are a requirement of the Municipal Finance Management Act.
Residents' representatives in Council are meant to find out from them what they need. It's the citizens' needs that should inform development plans for the municipality.
Only once these plans have been sketched out can the city's budget be right-sized to make it possible to carry them out.
"Expect drama at the Recreation Hall," our senior reporters briefed the Grocott's team. "People from Ward 4 know what they're entitled to and they'll be challenging the councillors about what they haven't delivered."
In another area, the allocation of houses would be the main issue. And so on.
Feelings run high on issues close to people's hearts and our reporters have seen everything: stand-up fights between councillors; residents locking councillors inside a hall; residents locking councillors outside a hall.
We were ready for anything except what we saw.
When Grocott's got to the Albany Road Recreation Hall on Wednesday night, instead of loud shouting and angry gestures, the crowd had formed up in couples and were smiling at each other as they waltzed, foxtrotted and tangoed across the floorboards.
In Extension 6, instead of exchanging verbal bullets, the councillors and residents had apparently opted to have it out in a formal, structured battle. They moved across the floor in an elegant sequence of staged attack and defence.
The IDP meetings had made way for ballroom dancing and a karate class respectively.
"They came around with loudhailers," someone at the Rec Hall explained. "They said the meeting was cancelled."
Residents (and our reporters) who made their way to BB Zondani Hall hadn't even had the benefit of a loudhailer to tell them why the hall was locked up still and dark.
It's no joke, though, that Makana Municipality's governance processes are behind schedule.
The municipality's annual report for 2012/2013 was meant to be tabled at Council on 25 January, along with the Auditor General's report.
The IDP for the next five years, aligned to the next three-year budget cycle, should be getting finalised as we write this.
When local government processes run behind, things don't get done.
Not only is this against the law; it also deprives citizens of their right to participate, and ultimately, it deprives them of the services they're entitled to.
This edition celebrates the work of some of the NGOs in Makana that try to fill the gaps left by our leaders.
We report on a project to help township youth achieve their academic potential; Famsa; Rhodes University's community engagement programme; and a special achievement by participants in the President's Award programme, which has its head office in this city.
We do have things to be proud of.
