by Nontando Guwa

Remember the old saying “Where there is smoke, there is fire”? It would be true to say there has been smoke all over the Eastern Cape ever since Nosimo Balindlela came to power as premier.

The media, academics, civil society organisations and members of the public had been highlighting the service-delivery crisis in the province for a long time, offering alternatives and suggestions that seemed to fall on deaf ears. Eventually the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ANC had no choice after visiting the province but to recommend to the National Executive Committee (NEC) that she be fired.

Many say that the decision to sack her had been long coming after President Thabo Mbeki’s defeat in Polokwane, as Balindlela is known to be one of Mbeki’s loyal supporters. That would, however, hold water had the state of service delivery in the Eastern Cape not been so poor for so long.

It would appear that Balindlela was an incompetent candidate for the position to begin with, a fact which Mbeki missed. She failed to deliver when she was the MEC for Education; neither did she do much when she was MEC for Sports and Culture. Mbeki’s choice for her to lead the Eastern Cape was therefore baffling to say the least. However, although the decision was heavily criticised, proponents of woman empowerment were nevertheless happy about the gesture from the president.

Her first few crucial decisions since assuming her duties as premier involved firing everyone who was friends with Makhenkesi Stofile, including a couple of MECs and senior officials, most of whom were suspended on full pay for about a year before being fired. She then reshuffled her cabinet without much regard for what the Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) of the ANC had to say. She appointed people who lacked relevant skills and expertise to key positions within the province, compromising the quality of service delivery in the process.

For instance, she appointed Mkhangeli Matomela as the Education Minister. It was well known within the Education Department that Matomela could not perform the tasks that were required of him. True to speculation, in no time the Education Ministry’s performance in the province took a downward spiral with matric results becoming poorer and poorer each year.  Currently,  939 schools in the province are still mud structures, 572 of those are in urgent need of attention, 1 200 do not have running water, 842 are without sanitation, 1 924 without electricity, 2 171 have no fences, 5 136 don’t have libraries and 5 162 don’t have laboratories. To make things worse, spending on the infrastructure of schools was suspended for months in 2006 because the department was R602 million in the red.

A forensic audit on the School Nutrition Programme (SNP) revealed that R100 million disappeared, and never reached the poor and starving children for whom it was intended. Sadly, for the majority of children in rural areas within the province, this is the only meal they receive in a day. The audit by Ngubane and Company revealed how front companies were set up to benefit from the SNP, and how millions were paid to contractors without documentation.

The other notorious department was Health, which has been performing poorly year after year. The DA in August 2007 asked Balindlela to place the Health Department under the administration of the National Treasury. Instead of working hard to upgrade and properly resource clinics and hospitals within the province, the Health Ministry worked hard to develop a plan to downgrade many hospitals, a move which went totally against the developmental goals of the ANC. It took a directive and pressure from COSATU and the PEC for Balindlela to nullify the Health Department’s plan. This happened against the backdrop of a health crisis that saw many baby deaths in Ukhahlamba due to a lack of proper healthcare.

The dismal performance of the Health Ministry within the province is not surprising, since the MEC has no medical background at all. Balindlela appointed Nomsa Jajula after sacking Dr Bevan Goqwana, who was a medical doctor by profession. Jajula admitted at the time of her appointment that she did not initially want to accept the appointment, but hoped “God would help”. From her position as MEC for Sport to MEC for Health, it was quite clear that the premier cared little about improving healthcare in the province.

Housing is another department where performance was so dismal that the National Department of Housing had to intervene. The announcement of the return of R443 million to  National Treasury due to under-spending by the provincial Department of Housing earlier this year was a painful blow to many families who had been waiting for years to be allocated houses.

The appointment of service providers, who lack expertise and experience in housing policy development and technical aspects of the housing process, to do crucial work continues within the department. Also of concern is the serious lack of capacity and vital skills within the department.
The National Department of Housing had to intervene precisely because the number of houses delivered by the province was getting smaller and smaller as the department shamelessly rolled back “excess” money to the Treasury.

In May 2008, a High Court Judge ordered Balindlela to release the full version of a study she had commissioned Fort Hare to conduct on the state of service delivery in the province. According to the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) which brought the application to court, the report had been withheld from the public since it was completed in mid-2006. Non-disclosure of information which by nature belongs in the public domain is a serious fall away from the core tenets of our democracy. Judge Elna Revelas, who ruled on the case, said: “Our country has had many examples of just how the non-disclosure of views of citizens of this country served as a catalyst to destroy, let alone inhibit, candid debate on problems which concerned all.”

It would appear that Balindlela never had any concrete strategies for lifting the Eastern Cape out of poverty; if she had, she would have surrounded herself with competent people, and in her reshuffling, she could have placed relevant skills where their use could have been maximised.

She had also politically alienated herself from the tripartite alliance, making it difficult for the PEC to fend for her. But how could they have, in the current state of service delivery in the Eastern Cape?

A cursory consideration of all this would point to the ANC staying true to its manifesto and putting its foot down at poor administration and poor service delivery. However, there could also be an element of vengeance by political opponents. Whatever the motivation, the need for a new broom was long overdue.

First published in The Transformer Vol. 14 No. 4 August - September 2008