Political analyst Rob Hersov frequently refers to South Africa as “our broken country.” While evidence of that is ubiquitous, reports in The Mercury’s June 4 edition amplify just how broken things are.
The letter by DA MP Tim Brauteseth on the state of municipal finances reminds us of the fact that only 41 of the 257 municipalities have clean bills of health. Service delivery is 20% in one municipality after exceeding its total budget by 13%; another manages a 32% service delivery after spending 100% of its budget. R220 million was spent on consultants whose ‘advice’ has been a total waste of time and money.
The front page article of eThekwini facing critical staff shortages in infrastructure units is no surprise. It’s a situation that has been haemorrhaging for the last 15 years to the point that in the critical water and sanitation unit, 58% of its posts are unfilled.
“Why does a city as large as eThekwini struggle to attract and retain the skills required to maintain its infrastructure?” inquires Auditor General Tsakani Maluleke. The answer is because of the elephant in the room. Inflexible labour laws prioritise demographic quotas ahead of skills capacity. Socialist labour unions ring fence their own regardless of skills. Ideology has driven out institutional memory and caused skills to migrate overseas.
Unless that elephant in the room is bluntly identified and decisive measures taken to end the obvious cause of the broken state of the infrastructure, the hand-wringing of opposition parties like Action SA is futile and evasive.
Of course, abetting the shambles is rampant corruption, which flourishes when institutional memory is lost and replaced by politically connected appointees. Page 3 of The Mercury highlights another broken aspect of our once-functioning country: The KZN Education Department is in financial collapse.
Again, the cause is just another elephant in the room, namely, the Marxist trade union, Sadtu. It is common knowledge that this outfit actually runs the Department. Calls for a summit meeting of stakeholders, like the consultants summoned to ‘fix’ broken municipalities, means a lot of hot air and further unaffordable expenses, which succeed only in applying a band-aid to the broken status quo.
The cause of South Africa’s broken state is as clear as daylight. It’s because of kleptocracy, corruption, ineptitude and blind adherence to a failed totalitarian ideology.
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