South Africa’s Urban Crisis

There was something deeply pathetic about the last-minute attempts by the African National Congress (ANC) to prettify parts of Jo’burg and to start talking the language of urban renewal. In effect ANC governments have allowed their own party activists to ransack the coffers of the nation’s cities and towns for the best part of thirty years.

Now, however, the government wished to call a partial halt to this process so as to give the party some faint hope of limiting the damage it is likely to suffer in the forthcoming municipal elections. Meanwhile, the World Bank is extending a loan of nearly $1 billion to the government to assist in the process of rebuilding the eight metros. One can only hope that the bank has inserted some really tough anti-corruption provisos into the loan agreement to prevent the usual sharks from making off with the money.

One way of thinking about the situation is to imagine the Democratic Alliance (DA) posters for the local elections. They really are spoiled for choice. One poster could be a picture of urban decay in Jo’burg, Pretoria, or Durban with the slogan “Want more of this? Vote ANC” or possibly “Why would anyone want any more of this?”

Or they could transpose onto a picture of dereliction in Soweto with some of the key data about DA spending on key township infrastructure in Cape Town. Or pictures of run-down Bloemfontein/Mangaung or Grahamstown/Makhanda with the slogan; “This is how the ANC wants us all to live”. For the ANC is virtually defenceless against these unpleasant truths.

Currently Ramaphosa is promising R1 trillion of infrastructure expenditure “over the medium term”. This is deliciously vague. We don’t know where on earth such a sum is coming from – a thousand billion rands, remember – nor what it is going to be spent on nor over what period. Only a year or two ago there was a great deal of excited government talk about mobilising private investment into infrastructure. And there seemed to be private sector willingness to find the money.

But that in turn would mean finding really needed infrastructure projects (not imaginary bullet trains), costing them and ensuring they would yield a good economic return. So who was going to do that work? The answer, it turned out, was no one in particular so after a little while all such talk stopped without a single such project having been financed.

ANC planning

And that is what ANC planning looks like. All the fun is in the drama of the announcement and the rhetoric which follows. The National Plan was itself a high point of this sort of “non-policy-making”: introduced with great fanfare after a board of worthies had worked to come up with it. Elaborate promises, replete with actual figures for how much investment would be mobilised, how many jobs would be created, and thereafter many proud speeches quoting some of its promises and goals. But it turned out that nobody at all was charged with actually making any of this happen. Only trouble makers would raise questions about that. When you’d heard the promises you’d already had whatever fun that initiative could provide.

It’s a bit like the Madlanga Commission on Police Corruption. This was introduced with great fanfare to show how much importance the government gave to the subject. But then it emerged the Commission couldn’t meet because no one had booked a suitable room for them... The whole thing belongs in a magical realist novel.

So, my advice would be to refuse to get excited about Ramaphosa’s promises of R1 trillion to be spent on infrastructure. He doesn’t have that sort of money or any idea as to how to get it, let alone how to spend it. Talk such as that – plus the accompanying vows not to let the construction mafia steal all this money is simply meant to put you in a better frame of mind as the municipal elections approach.

Only those who want to find this sort of chatter reassuring will find it so. For the rest of us, surely we are all getting a bit too grown up for this kind of playground nonsense?

As for the World Bank loan of nearly $1 billion for urban renewal, that is a lot more real but hesitate before you clap. First, remember that this has to be shared among eight metros, that the Bank will insist on them being fully up to scratch in terms of audits, financial procedures, transparency etc and that probably only Cape Town will find it easy to comply. Those with large amounts down in their audits as irregular or unexplained expenditure will find themselves in difficulty.

Secondly, large cities like Jo’burg, Durban, and Pretoria have all, under ANC rule been starved of adequate maintenance funds for many years. The cumulative expenditure now necessary to set things right is well into the tens, nay scores of billions. The World Bank money may be helpful but it will barely scratch the surface of what is required.

Getting any of these three cities into decent shape again will take many years of very determined and reform-minded administration. The sort of quick-fix currently going on in parts of Jo’burg is mainly cosmetic.

Community initiatives

Meanwhile there are a number of “feel good” community initiatives afoot to save Jo’burg in particular, and to encourage private and voluntary initiatives – often to perform tasks which should have been undertaken by the municipality but haven’t been. The Daily Maverick has also set up a special unit to report on Jo’burg’s activities and struggles. Recently there have also been reports of a reverse “semigration” of former Jo’burg residents drawn back to the city because of its employment opportunities and its now much lower house prices (particularly in comparison with Cape Town). None of these phenomena should be taken seriously any more than occasional newspaper articles suggesting that Jo’burg will “bounce back”.

This is so because the city’s fundamental problems are:

1. Continuous failures of the electricity generation and transmission system.

2. Ongoing water shortages and cut-offs.

3. The poor state of the roads, bridges, and the entire urban transport network, including the failure of large numbers of traffic lights. The result has been to make it much harder and more dangerous to move around the city.

4. High levels of crime, corruption, homelessness, drug abuse, and so on.

It is simply very difficult to imagine a successful modern city in these circumstances unless these deficiencies can be overcome. A completely reliable supply of electricity and water are no-compromise issues. Moreover, high levels of corruption and maladministration have meant that most of the metros are now close to bankruptcy and often have high levels of debt. And while Jo’burg, Pretoria, and Durban remain under ANC control their deterioration is likely to continue.

This last point is fundamental. In any metro run by the ANC corruption tends to be endemic. In effect, if local activists with limited education and of limited economic means are put in charge of a city with a multi-billion Rand budget some degree of corruption is virtually inevitable. Over time the city then becomes the focus of powerful criminal networks intent on feeding off that large budget. Typically, members of the municipal elite are suborned by these interests and integrated into their networks. Once such a situation is in place it is extremely difficult to change it.

Crispian Olver, an ANC activist sent to Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth), to try to prevent such networks from controlling the city found it to be an all but impossible job – see his How to Steal a City: The Battle for Nelson Mandela Bay, an Inside Account (2017).

Impossible task

Olver’s task, however, was to stop the crooks taking over the city but at the same time to keep the ANC in power. That was, indeed, probably an impossible task. More to the point was the DA’s take-over of Cape Town in 2006. The ANC had only been in power for four years and was already racked by frequent corruption scandals. When Helen Zille took over as mayor she not only removed power from the ANC but quickly got rid of those ANC appointees – like the City Manager – who refused to take orders from the new majority. The web of corrupt interests which grows around any ANC municipal administration had not enough time to entrench itself and was also soon excluded from influence.

Only that sort of complete shut-out, vigilantly maintained over a period of years, is proof against the complete capture of the local state seen in Durban, Jo’burg, and Pretoria. So, in party terms the best recipe for municipal success is simply a steady DA majority. But that is unlikely to provide a national solution.

One possibility is a move to the direct election of executive mayors, as seen in the United States. This results in individual candidates putting forward campaign pledges so that, in theory at least, there is real accountability and voters can also assess the individual strengths of candidates.

Such a system does at least guarantee that the mayor is well known and that he or she serves a full term. It makes impossible the sort of shuffle of little-known and almost anonymous mayors seen in Jo’burg in recent years. And it tends to mean a judgement based on results: a mayor who comes to power promising to crack down on crime, for example, will have to show declining crime rates if he/she is hoping for re-election – and note that each American city has its own police department. The results of the American system are variable but at its best it produces well-run cities with complete decentralisation of power and a high level of democratic accountability. That said, such executive mayors still have to work with democratically elected councils, typically chosen on party grounds.

It may be that South Africa is moving towards such a system. Helen Zille’s campaign for the Jo’burg mayoralty places practical questions of how to stage the city’s recovery at the centre of the debate and because she is a well-known city reformer, other parties in the city are under pressure to come up with similarly well-known and prestigious candidates. There seems some possibility that this will focus attention on pragmatic questions of who will best run the city – rather than the usual focus on race and party ideology. The polls thus far suggest that many younger black people will opt for Zille.

Criminal infiltration

However, it must be admitted that no amount of institutional reform will be proof against determined criminal infiltration. After all the same local activists of the ANC, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK) will be involved, no matter what the institutions are, and experience suggests that corruption always thrives in those milieux. All that one can suggest is that the central government must be prepared to intervene more forcefully and at a much earlier stage once it is clear that a metro has gone off the rails. Yet how much faith can one have in that?

The ANC government has taken a largely hands-off attitude towards municipal misgovernment for a whole generation. It is getting involved now only because the situation is so dire and because crucial local elections are approaching.

And there is no guarantee that government will be helpful. Now that Knysna is under ANC rule again it is a predictable mess but the ANC has used its power in the National Council of Provinces to prevent the provincial DA government from intervening to set Knysna back right again.

In effect the national government is facilitating and protecting local corruption in Knysna. When you next hear Ramaphosa inveighing against corruption or promising “renewal”, just remember Knysna.

The brute fact is that once the G20 was over, the attempts to prettify Jo’burg ceased and that while all three of the African nationalist parties – the ANC, EFF, and MKP – are bound to continue looting and mismanaging the towns and cities they dominate, the country’s entire urban future is at risk. South Africa has not yet had its own Detroit – a major city going bust – but we are close to it. All that prevents that now is the fact that the huge city debts to Eskom and the water boards continue to be unpaid, but if payment is enforced or, alternately, if the water and electricity is cut off because of non-payment, many of our towns and cities will be bankrupt. As for viable cities, we will be left only with Cape Town and George.

Some may be tempted to argue that towns and cities are essentially colonial constructs, the creations of the whites – and certainly, none existed before the advent of white colonisation. So, perhaps one should not expect them to survive African rule. But that ignores the fact that Nairobi, Dar-es-Salaam, and Kampala all continue while Nigeria has a brand new capital city, Abuja, with 4.2 million people – Africa’s fastest growing city. Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, is a model of good administration and is spick and span.

Economists tell us that with its present policy mix – the product of a whole generation of ANC government – the country is not capable of growing in real terms. That is to say, under ANC rule the likelihood is that real incomes per capita will probably fall indefinitely so that South Africa never becomes a developed country. Probably, in time, that would also mean the end of democracy. What the situation in South Africa’s metros tells us is that under ANC rule the country is also barred from becoming a modern urbanised society. What the ANC has achieved, in other words, is to cut South Africa off from its presumed future. You could call the result “transformation” but sadly a more accurate description would be a self-constructed cul-de-sac.