On any given day, in the morning or evening rush hour, you will find Tshwane metro police personnel at a bend on Soutpan Road near the R80 highway from Soshanguve to Pretoria. They will make a show of checking your car registration. They will likely say you have broken some rule or regulation. They will surreptitiously look around, then ask you for “cold drink”.
While all this is happening, about 700m away on the corner of Soutpan and the R80, you will notice three young women in Outsurance uniforms efficiently directing the traffic. Anywhere else in the world, this is a job that is done by the metro cops. Not in Tshwane.
I think of that bend on Soutpan Road every time I hear about business helping politicians fix the mess these same politicians have made of running a town, city or province. I have mixed feelings. I want business to assist. The pointspeople are doing an amazing job of untangling the traffic on that notoriously narrow and accident-prone road. They have freed up the metro police to focus on crimes. Yet, from my experience, the metro cops are not there to catch criminals. They are shaking down motorists.
I was in Pietermaritzburg, part of Msunduzi municipality, last week. Driving into the city from the airport, one is struck by houses that look trashed, hijacked or abandoned. Refuse collection seems like a distant dream. Crime is a major problem. Sewers are apparently blocked in some parts of the city. Electricity supply is unreliable.
The Pietermaritzburg & Midlands Chamber of Business, Trade & Investment KwaZulu-Natal and the KZN Growth Coalition spent two days last week with the mayor and top officials of the municipality to hash out these problems and come up with solutions.
Meanwhile, in Makhanda, donkeys walk the streets, eating from uncollected rubbish bins, while the municipality still suffers — years after the problem started — from lack of running water, poor infrastructure and unreliable power. At the same time, cable theft and illicit drug activity flourish. Local businesses are trying to “assist”.
Ermelo, in Mpumalanga, has been without reliable running water for three years. When water is available from the local water treatment plant, it is so contaminated farmers can’t even use it to irrigate their plants. Business is trying to assist there too.
This is what is happening in the heart of the country. Politicians break things, business steps in and tries to fix them. Then, as is happening with the metro cops and Outsurance in Tshwane, the breaking continues while the private sector intervention paddles furiously to keep things intact. No-one wins. Bad acts become bad habits. Nothing is fixed.
If South African business is to help itself and the country, it needs to acknowledge that it has for the past two decades helped feed the corruption and incompetence monster that has brought our villages, towns and cities to the brink of collapse. Business has stood on the sidelines while politicians have broken things. Then, when crisis point is reached, business leaders step forward to “assist”. The assistance, however, is open-ended and business fails to make at least one thing clear: the help is not a free pass, it is not a replacement of government’s obligations, and it will be cut off if commitment to change is not shown by the other side.
Business leaders have now offered assistance to the City of Joburg. That’s great. Truly great. But it would be much better if organised business entered the arena with some very clear preconditions about changing the entitlement culture that prevails in government. Clear measures to stop duplication of tasks must be put in place. Institutions must be led by qualified, capable professionals. Timelines must be set. Deadlines must be adhered to.
Businesses, like all residents of the municipality, pay rates and taxes. That revenue is to pay capable civil servants to do the work that makes the city attractive for investors and residents.
There is now a dangerous notion in government, expressed by ministers and others, that “business must help”. That’s tosh. Business must be a good citizen. Business must make money, employ people, pay rates and taxes and engage in civic activities. It is not here to run the city, and it must not replace elected representatives. Politicians and officials must do their work.
