These days I spend the majority of my time in Gqeberha, the beautiful Eastern Cape coastal city that used to go by the colonial name of Port Elizabeth.
Although still one of the best urban areas to live in in SA, the city is feeling the direct and devastating effects of de-industrialisation.
Large factories that used to employ hundreds and thousands of workers have shut down over the years – causing joblessness above the national average.
Business, organised labour and the state have tried to keep companies such as Goodyear Tyres, but without success. Some of the factors leading to business closures are out of their hands – such as changing global consuming trends in the automative sector.
The increasing influx of cheaper Chinese vehicles into the SA market is causing anxiety about the continued profitability of established brands who assemble their cars in this country.
Reports that the department of trade, industry and competition (DTIC) is trying to entice Chinese manufacturers to move some of their operations to SA is easing fears somewhat.
The situation, however, is complicated by the fact that most vehicles assembled here are for export to European, US and other markets. Given the current geopolitical climate, where the US can change its tariff regime without much warning, convincing the Chinese to assemble cars here may not be enough if SA’s competitive advantage is destroyed through high tariffs.
In the midst of all this uncertainty, cities like Gqebehra have to wrestle with the realities of municipal councils failing to deliver services to both residents and businesses.
Some residents say the era of coalition governments has made things worse and that they do not really care who wins the metro at the end of this year so long as the outcome leads to a more stable government.
Any conversation with Gqeberha residents, be they from the townships or suburbs, eventually leads to complaints about the Nelson Mandela Bay metro’s failure to guarantee sustained running water and electricity.
Just like in Johannesburg, some will tell you they have gone for weeks without water. As a result, community protests are almost a weekly occurrence.
Again, just like Johannesburg, the Nelson Mandela Bay metro is under an ANC-led coalition government.
But residents’ frustrations are not just with the ANC and its collaborators.
The Nelson Mandela Bay metro was the first ANC-controlled major city to fall in 2016 as that year’s local government elections results ushered in an era of coalition governance in metros like Tshwane, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni – previously regarded as ANC strongholds.
The ANC’s historic defeat in Nelson Mandela Bay led to the formation of a new coalition government led by the DA, UDM and several other smaller parties. Unfortunately, its tenure was characterised by turmoil as votes of no-confidence and smaller parties changing their allegiances led to instability.
Some residents say the era of coalition governments has made things worse and that they do not really care who wins the metro at the end of this year so long as the outcome leads to a more stable government.
Likewise, the outcome of the 2016 elections in Johannesburg led to the formation of a DA-led, and EFF-backed, coalition government under the mayorship of Herman Mashaba.
Internal DA squabbles over how Mashaba ran the city, rather than the ANC’s fight-back campaign, eventually led to his axing. Subsequently, the city has had numerous changes in governing coalitions and mayors.
As Mashaba, who is now ActionSA leader, this weekend announced he’ll once again be running for mayor, one wondered how Joburgers remember his last tenure as mayor.
Was it, as his party and hagiographers would like us to believe, an era in which the City of Gold was well on its way to rehabilitation and claiming back the inner city from building hijackers when DA head honcho Helen Zille and associates suddenly put the brakes on all that by forcing him out?
Or was it, as some in the ANC want us to believe, the beginning of Johannesburg’s grand decay where key service delivery projects – especially to poor areas – were either scrapped or under funded and people with expertise and experience forced out on the assumption that they were “deployed cadres”, hence the skills crisis today?
This year’s would not be Mashaba’s first attempt at regaining the mayoral chain. He tried and failed in 2021, resulting in him declining to take up a seat in the new council.
The dynamics now, he would argue, have completely changed. The ANC is at its weakest in the city and only die-hard loyalists believe it stands any chance. To Mashaba’s mind, his real opponent in this election is Zille, the DA mayoral candidate.
He is targeting what used to be considered ANC strongholds as well as the huge black middle class vote in Johannesburg.
But how do those constituencies remember him as mayor? As a man under whose watch began all the current instability or as a businessman-cum-politician whose endeavours to deliver were frustrated by a DA that could not see past the northern suburbs?
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