Over the past two weeks, the DA-led coalition government in the City of Tshwane has been embarking on a campaign to recover monies owed to the municipality. It has done this by disconnecting the electricity and water of defaulters.
In just a week, the metro was able to recover half a billion rand — and aims to recover R17bn by the end of the campaign.
The most significant aspect of the municipality’s campaign is that its target is businesses, government departments and entities, as well as other big institutions. In doing this, the municipality has completely annihilated the narrative that seeks to suggest that the poor are to blame for nonpayment of services. It is abundantly clear that the perpetrators of this lawlessness are in fact, the rich.
The greatest irony and shame about this is that it took a racist party that has very little regard for black people to fight a struggle that a tripartite alliance comprised of a party that is “biased towards Africans in general and black people in particular” (the ANC) and a “vanguard party of the working class” (the SACP) could not fight.
The ANC and SACP have always made a noise about how capital must be punished, and yet sat back and allowed the same capital to play a hand in collapsing municipalities.
The low revenue collection rate by municipalities impedes on service delivery. Without adequate revenue, municipalities cannot adequately provide services that better conditions in communities. The people on the receiving end of this are largely poor black people who depend on state assistance for survival. The ANC government knows this and yet, it did nothing. Worse than nothing, it has consistently blamed the poor for the country’s revenue collection woes.
Today, the DA, known for its reactionary market fundamentalist politics, has taken the fight to the doorsteps of capital, punishing businesses and big institutions for failing to pay municipal rates. The campaign is set to extend to the City of Johannesburg where the mayor, Dr Mpho Phalatse, has confirmed that establishments such as Sandton City owes a shocking R168m in rates.
This is a mall located in the richest square mile in Africa. While the ANC government was labelling poor black people in Soweto delinquents and insinuating that their nonpayment of electricity is the cause of load-shedding problems in Johannesburg, the DA has recognised that the real problem lies with the rich.
We know today that it is businesses, exclusive estates, universities and government departments that are collapsing municipalities — not the poor in Soshanguve, Soweto or the inner city. And it took a notoriously anti-poor and anti-black party to be bold enough to walk the talk.
The ANC government and its contemptible alliance partner, the SA Communist Party, should be hanging their heads in shame. Fighting capital and standing up for the poor should have been a tripartite alliance fight. After all, this alliance was built on the foundation of being pro-poor. Nothing can be more pro-poor than holding private capital accountable for providing resources necessary for infrastructure development and service delivery.
These go a long way in alleviating poverty, creating employment and fighting inequalities. The developmental state that the ANC government claims to be trying to build depends on a private sector that is an active partner in resolving these structural challenges. And yet, the ANC has never thought it necessary to embark on a campaign that compels the same private sector to pay municipal rates.
Who would ever have imagined that we would live in a time where the DA is more radical on the question of holding capital accountable than the ANC and SACP ever have been? It boggles the mind!
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