By Steven Lang
Makana City Hall reverberated with foot-stomping, chanting and sporadic booing as the time approached for an election discussion broadcast on Mpuma Kapa TV, an Eastern Cape community television station, last Sunday. The Hall was packed with supporters from the four parties represented on the Makana Local Municipality Council: the African National Congress (ANC), the Democratic Alliance (DA), the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the Makana Citizens Front (MCF).
Mpuma Kapa presenter, Percy Lamani, hosted the panel that included Andile Hoyi, chief whip of the ANC in Makana; Kevin Mileham, the DA shadow minister of mineral resources and energy; Siyabonga Bashe of the EFF and Azania Soxujwa of the MCF.
All five of the men on stage had a gruelling task trying to be heard above the boisterous crowd that took every opportunity to express either their support or displeasure about what the panellists were attempting to say.
Lamani undoubtedly had the most difficult job with his often vain attempts to maintain some kind of order. At the beginning of the debate, he said they would discuss three issues: service delivery, the proposed move of the High Court to Bhisho, and the special service delivery, which focuses on the inadequate provision of water.
As it happened, poor service delivery was at the top of the agenda for most people in the hall, and very little was said about the removal of the High Court. The DA’s Mileham said, however, that his party would immediately put a stop to any plans to move the High Court because “if you don’t have jobs, you don’t have revenue, and if you don’t have revenue, you can’t deliver services”.
Perhaps the most contentious issues during the debate pivoted around the ANC’s track record as the majority party in Makana Municipality, the Eastern Cape Province and the national government for the past 30 years.
Is this track record so good that people should continue to vote for the governing party, or is it so bad that voters should look elsewhere?
ANC Councillor, Hoyi, said his party has done “a great job in terms of changing the lives of the people” and he would cite five reasons based on his party’s record in Makana to demonstrate why people should vote for the ANC once again.
He said that when his party came to power in 1994, the bucket system was in place in Grahamstown, as it was then called. He then claimed that “today we do not have a bucket system, we have flushing toilets”. This statement was greeted with a raucous mixture of cheers and heckling.
His second reason provoked even louder responses. Hoyi said that in 1994, there were communal taps that were serving communities; “today communities have access to their own taps”. He did not comment on how often those taps had water.
Hoyi offered a third reason to vote for the ANC, saying that in 1994, “there was no electricity here”, but “today there is electricity that has been brought through this government of the African National Congress”.
The fourth reason was about the RDP houses that can be seen in areas such as Extension 10, Extension 9 and Vukani.
Hoyi was not able to reach the fifth reason because both the crowd and the programme host wanted to move on. He was out of time.
The DA representative, Mileham, said that Makana has been a failing municipality for many years. He noted that both the national and provincial governments “have failed to intervene adequately and to take the necessary steps to place it under administration to ensure that the municipal council and the offices deliver the services that Makana residents actually need and deserve”.
He believes that people are now ready and willing to change and move away from ANC mismanagement and corruption.
Mileham pointed out that the top five municipalities in this country are all run by the DA. As evidence of the ANC’s mismanagement of local municipalities, he said of the 257 municipalities in South Africa, “151 of them are in financial distress – every single one of those is run by the ANC”.
The EFF’s Siyabonga Bashe said that most of the local issues manifested in Makana are “very important at a national level because local issues are part of the national debate around the lack of service delivery. This includes water issues, house issues, pothole issues, lack of jobs, maladministration by the municipality, – no service delivery at all”.
He stressed that important parts of the EFF manifesto were written in small towns and noted that “some residents from Makana submitted what they need when the EFF takes over government”.
Bashe returned to one of the key points of the debate when he pointed out, “There were lots of grants given to Makana Municipality even during COVID time to make that infrastructure and water – but till today there are sections of the community that still don’t have water”.
The fourth member of the panel, Azania Soxujwa, acknowledged that as his civic organisation, the MCF, is not running in either the provincial or national elections, he urges residents to vote for any party except the ANC.
He said, “It would be very wise for people to change their vote so that the MCF can reclaim the dignity of our people and reclaim the dignity of our city.”
