Paddi Clay: Living through Limbo in mad, bad Gauteng - Biznews

The Gauteng government’s plans for an R200 billion Sedibeng airport project and the “Adopt a Robot” traffic light campaign have sparked scepticism. Critics point to the region’s lack of basic infrastructure and accuse leaders of prioritizing unrealistic megaprojects over essential services. With vague details on funding and feasibility, these initiatives appear to shift responsibilities to private entities while neglecting governance accountability. Residents remain wary of corruption and await meaningful leadership changes.

Paddi Clay

Things are crazy bad in Gauteng.

Residents frequently go without water and electricity supply to their homes for days on end.

But the biggest announcement from the Gauteng Provincial government coalition this week was about its plans to build a R200 billion airport in Sedibeng, in the Vaal triangle, south of Johannesburg.  

Actually, the airport may cost R20 billion rather than R200 billion. It seems Gauteng’s Finance and Economic Development MEC Lebogang Maile, a man who trails clouds of allegations of mafia connections, is not too sure exactly what private investors will be putting into the project.

The Gauteng government led by Premier Panyaza Lesufi is always putting forward pie- in-the-sky mega-projects when the focus should be on the basics needed to keep the region and its cities running  effectively and its residents content.

Sedibeng seems a strange choice.

According to Kingsol Chabalala, representing the Democratic Alliance’s Emfuleni North Constituency, Sedibeng lacks tarred roads and sanitation is a big problem. 

But maybe that is all going to be solved when Gauteng’s latest great initiative gets going. Maybe it makes sense to build in Sedibeng because the extension of the Gautrain high speed train line to the area, a R120 billion project, is also being planned and was announced in the Premier’s State of the Province speech several months ago. 

Talking to media (IOL, SABC and Newsroom Afrika) Maile said the airport project would grow the economy of Sedibeng and create jobs. The money was not coming from government but from private investors.  He did not identify the investors but vaguely threw in the name of Citibank.

Oh, that’s all right then. Jobs will be conjured up and other people, not government, will be paying for it. 

All the government has to do, according to Maile, is provide the ‘minimum bulk infrastructure’ for the project.  (If all this comes to pass, I would bet my bottom dollar it will be the barest minimum.)

The MEC didn’t mention a feasibility study, or if there’d been any proven demand for another airport in the region. He certainly didn’t mention the fact that Emfuleni municipality, which is part of the Sedibeng District municipality, already has an airport and is intending to develop it as an ‘aerotropolis’. 

(Not surprisingly, the journalists didn’t interrogate Maile much on his announcement or perhaps he was just not very forthcoming on the details of the deal.)

Hot on the heels of the provincial government’s airport project announcement came another ‘wizard’ or ‘ripping wheeze’. If you’ve read Harry Potter books or, if of an older generation, have ever immersed yourself fin the exploits at Greyfriars school in the Beano comic, you’ll understand):  the Gauteng government’s Adopt a Robot campaign. 

(A robot, for the benefit of foreign readers or those who may be confused, is the name in Sow Theffricun innglissh for a traffic light. You can find more such words from our own peculiar language, with pronunciations, in Robin Malan’s seminal,  linguistic study Ah Big Yaws or the 1980 edition of Jean Brandford’s Dictionary of South African English.)

Adopt a Robot is another one of those grand schemes by Lesufi and the Gauteng GPL gang to get others to pay for what they should and could be doing, if it weren’t for the huge debts they’re carrying. Like the 21 billion e-toll debt.

This traffic light campaign is not, unfortunately, an invitation to decorate these frequently out-of-action street structures in the manner of the English, who have taken to adorning red-painted letterboxes on streets in their towns and villages with cutesy crocheted headgear, scarves and other novel outfits.

Obviously, it is also not a call for residents to chop down a robot of their choosing and cart it off, as the vandal population and infrastructure thief community appears to be doing even in broad daylight. Only a few weeks ago, the stop sign at the top of my street went off with a stranger to some or other scrap dealer. 

Adopt a Robot invites ‘private entities’ to enter into an arrangement the ANC hopes will allow it to go bashing on with huge fantastical projects, without having to worry too much about such basics as repair or maintenance of assets related to the delivery of services and protection to residents.  

Premier Panyaza Lesufi’s government has already signed memoranda of understanding with 16 sponsors to take custodianship of the region’s 149 problematic traffic lights at main route intersections. 

I am presuming Lesufi is also dumping the cost of the training of the 203 interns, who are envisaged as becoming part of a future in-house traffic light maintenance team, on the new custodians, in exchange, perhaps, for points towards their BEE scores. 

Lesufi’s adoption scheme is not really so off-the-wall as commentators on social media have made it out to be. 

The Outsurance Pointsmen project is a traffic management initiative that’s been on and off since 2005 in Johannesburg and has also expanded to Tshwane.  It trains and  employs previously unemployed people to direct traffic flow at heavy-traffic intersections where the lights have failed (from “lack of maintenance” or during power cuts (which persist in Gauteng).

The sponsor company ‘s pointsmen wear the company’s logo and colours.

I’ve certainly been grateful to see one of them, especially if the alternative is an opportunistic intersection take-over by some completely untrained amateur who may possibly even be part of a thieving syndicate that deliberately disables the lights and will think nothing of walking off with the whole thing.

Don’t be misled into thinking I approve of Lesufi’s latest parasitic arrangement to shuffle off a core responsibility of his provincial government, I don’t. But residents of Gauteng, its cities and its towns, must be realistic and pragmatic right now.

The real work of municipalities and the provincial government is mostly not well-managed or in fact being done at all.  

Private entities, private money and non- profit organisations, and citizen volunteer groups are all needed to step up and help do what debt-ridden and inept provincial governments as well as local government municipalities cannot do for their residents.

Private investors are also necessary in any attempt to create jobs and get the economy growing.  

Our trust in our local leaders is low. We know tenderpreneurs, looters, and fraudsters will flock around and feed off any of these vaunted megaprojects as they have been proven to do off departmental budgets.

We know Lesufi and the destructive council coalitions in many of our cities are not keen on transparency, or even, sometimes, the opposition’s right to have oversight or even speak in a council meeting. We know we will hear little detailed information on anything ‘the leadership’ plans to do or is doing.

There is also no sign that anyone is soon going to change the appalling leadership we have found ourselves saddled with. 

So we do what we have to do, in this two-year limbo before the municipal elections.

It seems it is then, and only then, that we may be able to eject the ‘vampire squads’  inflicted on us, and eventually, if possible, get back, at the least, a regular supply of electricity and water to our homes, as well as smooth, tarred roads and working traffic lights.

Paddi Clay spent 40 years in journalism, as a reporter and consultant, manager, editor and trainer in radio, print and online

https://www.biznews.com/rational-perspective/2024/12/03/paddi-clay-mad-bad-gauteng

This article was first published on the Daily Friend.