Helen Zille moves to Joburg next week

(This article first appeared as a Johannesburg newsletter. Subscribe here.)

I am just back from Cape Town and what a time we had: family, friends, beach, sun (Joburg was so rainy), fun and also good public services. I try not to make the fallacious comparison between the cities because I’m a Joburg fangirl and also because it tends toward the cheap party-political point-scoring which I try to steer well clear of.

I have been thinking a lot about cities and what makes the two different, service-wise – and let’s face it, they are palpably so. I also hung out on the Cape Flats and I go through and past informal settlements enough to know the yawning gaps in Cape Town, so I write with that political consciousness. With the lion’s share of staff and Daily Maverick operations in Cape Town, I visit often enough to be sure my observations are not only viewed through rose-coloured, holiday spectacles.

The traffic lights work, the verges are cut, the pot-holes where we drove were few and far between. The street lights work! The public square is built for the public and appears to serve the public – the facilities at beaches and other holiday spots were well-kept and constantly cleaned and maintained by public works workers employed on the Expanded Public Works Programme. It’s not 100% – I saw on Eskom se Push app that areas were regularly without water and when I visited family holidaying from Japan in Franschhoek, there was a helluva long blanket power outage. But the trajectory is toward service and functionality whereas that is Joburg’s story of exception rather than its direction of travel

I study Johannesburg and less so, Cape Town. And the thesis I am developing is that what has happened in our City is that it optimises for its highly-paid managers and contractors as well as for the consumptive desires of the party political interests across the coalition governing the City. It has lost sight of its people – ergo, the only time we saw social delivery at a pace necessary to deal with the decline was when the G20 leaders were due in town. Despite Mayor Dada Morero’s protestations to the contrary, it was political cynicism and not a commitment to service and it’s all come apart if the accounts of water and power cuts over the holidays and the number of traffic lights on the blink are anything to go by.

Cape Town is an example of political ambition: the DA uses service delivery in the City to drive its expansion plans. It is a showcase. The ANC in Johannesburg is so hung up on divvyimg up positions, contracts and. board roles that it is squandering its own future and it has lost its governance ambitions – the party’s numbers in the City are at rock bottom despite the G20 glam-up. The party has eviscerated its ability to govern through decades of patronage politics.

This year, I want to spend a lot of time studying how Joburg optimises and for whom and what it says about the political landscape.

I asked Good Party secretary-general Brett Herron for his view “I have previously pointed out the unnecessary painting of street markings in my neighborhood while it’s needed in communities on the Cape Flats. Helen Zille responded to say the Ward Councillor had used his ‘ward allocation’ (a discretionary budget each Ward Councillor gets to fund projects in their ward) to pay for the street markings. I checked the budget and there was no ward allocation for street markings in my ward;

“When your government claims to be the best run, with clean audits, a stable comfortable majority government, a ‘fit-for-purpose administration’… then surely we can expect more from our City government. The City of Cape Town does not have the governing or administration instability City of Joburg has yet it doesn’t harness all these resources to do more. It is undeniable that the Cape Flats neighborhoods are underdeveloped compared to the suburbs. Good governance is meaningless to those who live in squalor.”

Here is some early year Joburg news, as well as a handful of shows, podcasts and musical highlights from the past year.

1: Helen Zille’s packing for Joburg – and may join Council

Back from her holidays, the DA mayoral candidate for Johannesburg is packing for Joburg, Alex Patrick reported in News24 here. She arrives this week and will probably also take up a seat in Council. (News24 is paywalled and well worth a subscription.)

2: Meet the koesister queen of Fietas, who blends Cape Malay tradition with fierce activism

My other theory of the City is that it works despite the worst efforts of its government and it does so with the sheer energy and vitality and big hearts of its people. One of them is Yola Minnar of Vrededorp. Her koeksisters are legendary and so is her big heart. When you drive past her place, you often see people eating or collecting water. Our colleagues at Our City News have this delightful story – Our City News

3: Your Community Manager exposes a suspected human trafficking operation

Your Community Manager, Aneesa Adams and a friend were driving in Mulbarton last week and noticed two distressed young men at a garage. They got them food, blankets and water and asked the local security, who had apprehended them, what had happened. It looks like (another) alleged Ethiopian human trafficking operation as Aneesa reported here.

4: Simon’s Town unites against over-development

Since this is the Cape Town edition of the Joburg newsletter, I found this story by our colleague Kevin Bloom fascinating. Something you would have noticed in Cape Town are the cranes – everywhere. The City’s booming. But what happens when a neighbourhood’s integrity is threatened and also its history and its people who want their land back after losing it to the theft of the Group Areas Act? Great read.

Joburg ‘Person of the day’

It’s very easy to spot Nandi Dlepu with her signature voluminous hairstyle. Dlepu is the founder of Mamakashaka & Friends, an agency and cultural studio in Braamfontein, a hood area she loves because “it connects north and south”. It was here that Dlepu and her team founded several groundbreaking brands including Pantone Sundays, a colour-themed fashion experience where fashion, music, beauty, and community meet. Each edition invites guests to show up and show out through the palette of the day, from sleek platinum grey to fiery red.

Picture of the day

My go-to spot

PRON | 69 7th St, Linden, Johannesburg

….every dish is a delight at this modern Chinese spot that is always pumping.

This article first appeared as a Johannesburg newsletter. Subscribe here.