Dear Madam Mayor,
I wrote to you some time ago offering to give the same talk to your Councillors that I recently presented to the Friends of the Library on the history of local government in Grahamstown/Makana. My address was based on six theses done by the Rhodes University Department of History covering the period 1837-1960 and also attempting to fill in what happened during the post-1960 period. Grahamstown was only the second municipality in the country to become formally incorporated (following Port Elizabeth by a few months). It was at the forefront of the development of local government in South Africa.
The six theses documenting the history of our municipality are a unique resource which has largely gone unnoticed. I thought the talk would illuminate and inspire you and your Councillors, but my suggestion, unfortunately, received no response. It still stands should you have second thoughts.
Something that emerges very firmly from the theses is the role played by individuals in our local government, especially those who achieved the honour of being appointed mayor. Mayors were previously elected based on their personal credentials rather than their political affiliation, as in the present dispensation. Today, mayors like yourself are, I am sorry to say, comparatively unknown outside the political structures that nominated and elected them. It is unfortunate that in terms of the current dispensation, mayors don’t take as much personal responsibility for the municipality’s performance but are only political appointees and, therefore, only assume collective responsibility.
Something else that emerges very firmly from the theses is the role that civic pride played from the time when Grahamstown emerged as a settlement out of the military garrison. As is stated in the first of the theses: “In Grahamstown, civic pride and concern came first and was not a product of local self-government.” Grahamstown was one of the first places to push for local self-government, and that push was a product of civic pride, not vice versa. As I recently wrote in the Grocott’s Mail, mayors ought to exemplify civic pride, and I called upon you to provide an example in that regard and to launch a civic pride campaign.
Since then, a significant and long overdue clean-up has been happening around the town, and things are looking much improved, but it is unfortunate that it is not a municipal initiative and that our under-utilised municipal workforce is not involved in it at all, nor are you being seen to provide any leadership in this regard.
Madam Mayor, you wear the Mayoral robes and chain of office with pride on ceremonial occasions, but the importance of those symbols is not only ceremonial. I urge you and your Council to formally adopt a municipal ‘civic pride’ campaign as an incentive for councillors, municipal officials and workers to work harder and to display more civic pride in the service of the community. It is distinctly lacking at present.
Please see it as your personal responsibility as our First Citizen to exemplify civic pride and to reinstate it as the primary purpose of your office, your Council and the municipality. Doing so would establish an important legacy of your mayoralty instead of merely being yet another incumbent, as has been the case with your other political predecessors, none of whom have made any lasting impact. On the contrary, each successive term of office has marked a further period of decline. One trusts that you will want to be remembered differently.
Yours sincerely,
JC McConnachie
