Fill the pothole: Why waiting for the state is killing us - van Staden - Biznews

Martin van Staden
“We need municipal authorisation,” is a common line heard from community organisers that on its face appears innocuous but might increasingly hold deadly consequences. What will it take for South Africans to break free of the psychological hold the state has on us?

Our self-righteousness has a severe social cost that is not always immediately evident, but we must start factoring it, as a handicap, into our thinking about the future of South Africa.

A tale of two potholes
In early April, a Randburg delivery-bike rider was killed after the car in front of him had to brake to avoid a pothole, forcing him to swerve into oncoming traffic.

Immediately, councillors and residents expressed their outrage at the Johannesburg municipality, which then promptly fixed the pothole. Too little, too late, for the bike rider.

This pothole had, presumably, been known for some time to members of the community who would have had to edge through or past it on their morning and afternoon commutes. It was left there, untended, until that one person had to give up his life before any tangible action was taken.

Shaking our fists at the municipality brings no comfort to the family of the deceased. Taking tangible steps to avoid this ever happening again, however, might just spare other families a similar tragedy.

My daily route to work takes me past what has been dubbed Johannesburg’s “largest sinkhole” − I have had the privilege of trying to skirt the hole twice a day – which motorists have watched grow in size in real time.

On two occasions – separated by months – I have seen municipal officials staring forlornly into the hole, before getting back in their vehicles and driving off after a “job well done”. This is frustrating, but I have thankfully developed something of an aversion to holding the children and invalids who staff South Africa’s organs of state to any substantive standards.

The real frustration is with the lack of community action.

Engineer Dr Talia da Silva, quoted in the link above, has explained in detail what needs to be done to fix the hole permanently. The municipality will bring in private contractors anyway to fix the hole if it ever deigns to take action – so why does the local community not take the initiative?

This sinkhole, in particular, could wipe out a whole car or taxi full of people. Bike riders will literally just disappear into it without a soul being any the wiser.

For now, it is just an example of municipal lackadaisicalness about which the community fumes, but it might become a symbol of true tragedy unless the those who live in the surrounding area adopt a different posture.

Brakfontein substation
Not all service delivery questions are directly life-or-death matters, though.

A large part of Centurion recently spent two weeks in darkness because arsonists burned down the Brakfontein substation.

Somehow, this key piece of infrastructure upon which tens of thousands rely for virtually everything was left entirely unguarded. As if safety and security in Gauteng is interchangeable with Zürich or Taipei!

Just yesterday morning, after the repairmen clocked off for the day, community members reported that the workers had “forgot[ten] to lock” the substation. Again, after all this pain, Brakfontein was left unguarded.

The initial knee-jerk reaction, of course, is: “How can the municipality be so reckless?!”

And, of course, that is the incorrect response.

It should instead be: How could the community be so reckless?

The Mayor of Tshwane and her mayoral team are all wealthy at the expense of residents, and very likely have advanced taxpayer-funded generators complete with an endless supply of diesel. They do not share the darkness with us, so shaking our fists at them hoping to provoke a response exposes us – not them – as being foolish.

Perish the thought that Tshwane will secure the Brankfontein substation after it has been fully repaired. The only question is: Will the Brakfontein substation from now on be guarded by community security officers? If yesterday is any indication, I have my doubts.

Community organisers
What I have discovered to be the barrier between action and inaction, are South Africa’s world-class community organisers.

Usually – though this is by no means a rule – they come in the form of a middle-aged woman whose seeming day job is to solve problems for her neighbours.

From spearheading the search for missing pets, informing everyone of community meetings, and liaising with municipal councillors, these women are the de facto mayors of many South African suburbs.

Community organisers are the absolute backbone of any effort to pull local South Africa out of its current malaise. They have developed a skillset that very few of us, myself certainly included, possess. Tangible community action, I’d wager, is dependent upon this personality type.

I and many others would be willing to play our part – financial or otherwise – in initiatives to tangibly solve municipal woes, but without the community organisers, who are necessary for any initiative to function at scale (and scale is key), this remains a dream.

But this sword is double-edged.

If community organisers are – as they regrettably are – preoccupied with the whims of municipal authorities when it suits them (then outraged at the municipalities when it does not) they play an important role in encouraging, not forestalling, the very collapse that claims lives.

Many of us have witnessed communities proposing to take some kind of action, only for this linchpin organiser to scuttle the initiative with those four dangerous words: “We need municipal authorisation.”

In the name of remaining so-called “law-abiding citizens,” these people and the bulk of their wider communities have outsourced their welfare entirely to political whim.

They have likely – implicitly – been raised to answer the question that I posed in the title of this column – “How many must die in the name of your being ‘law-abiding’?” – with “everyone”.

Many South Africans believe the highest moral virtue in society is to obey the dictates of the political elite, whether it was the National Party of the past, or the African National Congress, or Government of National Unity, of today.

But if our whole public ethic is premised on what some politician or bureaucrat scribbles on a piece of paper, we must admit that we live in a fundamentally sick society.

Without community organisers uncoupling themselves emotionally from the (holy) state, people will continue to die perfectly avoidable deaths, and struggling local economies will continue to lose millions of rands in perfectly avoidable damage to their domestic infrastructure and businesses.

It’s not fair!
Security, of course, is expensive. Public infrastructure orders of magnitude more so.

It is less expensive, however, when done through community effort than it would be for lone individuals.

While we might not believe this today, communities have built things – big and expensive things – for thousands of years, without shrugging that responsibility off for the political class to abuse.

None of this is fair or just, especially to ratepayers in good standing.

But smugly shouting into the ether that “it is the responsibility of the municipality!” solves nothing.

The municipality, certainly, does not care. No matter how hard we shake our fists, the comrades and cadres will only chuckle and continue to eat.

So, ultimately, when we shake our fists, we are shaking it at our own neighbours – who find themselves in the same boat we are in– and telling them, with righteous indignation, that we will do nothing.

I certainly do not want to rob anyone of their self-righteousness in this respect, because they are in fact right.

But our righteousness does not automatically translate into tangible solutions on our roads or at our electricity substations.

So, take a moment to rage at the municipality and say your piece, and say it loudly. But once you have done that, take a deep breath, get together with your neighbours, and go fill the pothole.

Martin van Staden is the Head of Policy at the Free Market Foundation and former Deputy Head of Policy Research at the Institute of Race Relations (IRR)

https://www.biznews.com/rational-perspective/fill-pothole-why-waiting-state-killing-us

This article was first published on the Daily Friend.