Johannesburg - Gauteng ANC deputy chairman David Makhura has made an impassioned plea to black professionals not to allow the province’s metros to fall in the “wrong hands” into the upcoming local government elections.
Makhura made the election appeal at the party’s dialogue with professionals and academics on socio economic transformation ahead of the local government elections last night.
Makhura warned that if Gauteng metros were to be won by anyone other than the ANC the urban promise for many black people who came to cities looking for a better life will be a “nightmare and disaster”.
“The first thing I want to appeal to you is that if you allow the cities to be in the wrong hands, transformation will be buried,” he said. “If Gauteng is governed by people who do not want transformation the urban promise will be urban nightmare and disaster.”
Makhura took a veiled swipe at opposition parties the DA and EFF accusing the DA of being undecided on transformation while he said the EFF wanted to destroy everything.
“If they (opposition parties) run these key cities imagine me as a premier with cities that run by the guys who are going to destroy and demolish everything even when they are in charge or those who will put breaks on transformation,” he added. “If critical cities are not in the hands of the ANC forget about everything, you will go back to the rural areas. There are cities in this country where black people appear like they are foreigners.
“The only place where black people can walk tall is not in Cape Town but here in Joburg even though you don’t control the economy.”
Makhura conceded that the ANC had its own errors but insisted that the party has done a lot to improve the lives of many and put people at the centre of development of cities.
He urged Joburg mayor Parks Tau to pay attention to “small things” like fixing potholes, ensure traffic lights were working and neighbourhood parks were maintained.
In addition, he said the city should have grand plans to transform its economy and to place competent black people at the centre to run it as professional civil servants. He said the ANC wanted to pay attention to the transformation of cities to ensure they are governed well because cities were key economic drivers of growth.
Tau told the professionals the as mayor he was not complacent in believing that the democratic breakthrough of 1994 has completed people’s freedom.
He said the party in Joburg had identified areas where it was important to get to the point where they could make meaningful difference in building a better Joburg.
These areas included political economies of provision of municipal services and space to ensure people had equitable access and proximity to an urban system’s amenities.
“We use access to services to address a comprehensive set of issues. The choice of how you deploy your services is a matter of the political economy of the services that you have.
“We should move beyond the task of saying our duty is to provide services to analysing the political economy of the provision of those services.”
Tau said the people of Orange farm, for instance cannot access employment opportunities simply because they do not have the income to go look for a job “let alone go to that job”.
“It is a means of exclusion from an urban system. Their freedom is incomplete for as long as they live there. When we talk about the deployment of public transport system that reaches out to these people, it is actually important to enable those on the outskirts of the city that they have equitable access to it.”
Tau said the city wanted to place people at the centre of its development.
Political Bureau