As the ANC is slowing losing power in the Free State, is national government allowing the province to collapse?

31 January 2022

Last week I spent two days in the Free State, where I can confirm there is no support, monitoring or intervention happening by national government. There's no 'District Development Model', at least not in the conventional understanding of 'development'. Aside from the resilience and innovation of ordinary folk, I only saw regression.

In the Matjhabeng Local Municipality (Welkom) and Manguang Metro (Bloemfontein) there are no technical support teams, no financial recovery plans being implemented, and no 'compacting' between municipal officials and private sector experts who can help solve the water crisis, the sewage crisis, and the waste crisis.

What keeps sewage from flooding large parts of Welkom are diesel-powered pumps. They relieve the pressure in blocked municipal lines. The sewage is pumped into open stormwater canals. If one of these pumps stops working, or if heavy rain starts falling, residents' despair, because then the sewage pushes up into their streets and backyards.

One Welkom resident has built his own system to drain sewage from blocked municipal lines under his house, so that the sewage runs into the street, and not his backyard. It’s not ideal, but if the state fails, what do you do? The resident tells me he still pays his municipal bills in full.

In Botshabelo and Thaba Nchu, in the ‘metro’ of Manguang, hundreds of households still use bucket and pit toilets, which the metro ‘services’ infrequently. There I met a resident who is now building her own septic tank. As resilient as she is, she couldn’t hold back her tears.

Free State voters did punish the ANC in the 2021 local elections - harsher than ever before, but not harsh enough for comrades to lose power in Mangaung and Matjhabeng. They hang onto resources, and the downward spiral started under the leadership of Ace Magashule continues.

In fact, you can still sense Ace Magashule’s ghost lingering in run-down Free State municipalities, from the broken pump stations to the contractors that issue invoices for work not done, and the dispair and indignity of pit and bucket toilets. You can even meet some of his family members who work as municipal officials.

It’s not clear whether the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, is scared of facing Ace’s ghost, or just indifferent to the suffering caused by corruption and mismanagement. The minister certainly can’t be ignorant of what’s happening. But she's certainly not doing or even saying anything in the way of intergovernmental monitoring, support, or intervention.

We know that calling for these councils to be ‘placed under administration’ is often a meaningless and even harmful prescription. Provincial administrators in the Free State are just as likely to be entangled in ANC infighting and patronage networks than their comrade mayors. 'Administration' is often just a cover for one ANC faction wresting control from another ANC faction.

But Minister Dlamini-Zuma is responsible for local and provincial government. She's the bearer of national government’s constitutional responsibility of monitoring the performance of municipalities and supporting their functions. And there is much that she and her officials can do short of placing municipalities under national government administration.

Minister Dlamini-Zuma is not the only cabinet minister shirking her responsibilities in the Free State. A financial recovery plan adopted for Manguang, in conjunction with National Treasury, is not being implemented. It’s never been implemented. Does Ace’s ghost also keep the finance minister from helping Free State communities?

DA councillors in Matjhabeng and Mangaung have devised clear plans of how the water and sewage crisis in these councils can be solved. We have to be prepared for the post-ANC era in the Free State, but we also have to stop everything from collapsing in the meantime. And so I will be presenting Minister Dlamini-Zuma with a set of simple steps that can be taken to prevent the situation from getting worse. Whatever her response, she won't be able to claim ignore of problems and solutions.

By Cilliers Brink, DA Shadow Minister of Cooperative Governance & Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), 31 January 2022