by Peter Kimemia

Every once in a while very intelligent people do very foolish things but when it comes to matters of political expediency, they invariably engage in acts of absolute absurdity and imprudence. Unfortunately, we are in such times now until elections are dispensed with.

However, even as we campaign and try to outdo each other we must be mindful of the fact that the elections will come and go and the communities which have become our stomping grounds in the political duels will be left behind to pick up the pieces and soldier on.

Sadly, the damage that is being dished out on long-term relationships among communities is at times devastating and likely to linger on long after elections.

There have been complaints about the use of public resources to campaign for a certain political party, politically motivated purges of civil servants and people working for public corporations as well as general witch-hunting staged against real and imaginary political opponents. As accusations and counter accusations fly, it is difficult to tell exactly who is holding the skunk.

What we have witnessed in no uncertain terms is the blatant misuse of ward committees to campaign for the ruling party. As usual we hold brief for no one else except democracy and good governance practice for the benefit of the people.

That is why what transpired in a ward committee meeting held at Mzokhanyo Senior Secondary School in Duncan Village on the 15th March 2009 cannot go unchallenged. The meeting was ostensibly called to enable the community to participate in the discussions over the IDP. It turned out that the reference to the IDP was just a facade meant to mask the real intentions of the ward committee! The meeting was quickly turned into a political campaign rally of sorts in favour of the dominant political party in the area to the dismay of community members who were not in the least interested in the political shenanigans.

The well choreographed drama began with a ward committee member jumping from his seat and belting out an anti-opposition song laced with generous praises of the alleged exploits of the ruling party.  A thoroughly enthused councillor found it too hard to resist the temptation to join in and she also quickly motioned at the bewildered audience to partake.

But this was just the beginning and more outrageous things were to follow. Our hallowed constitution and its enabling pieces of legislation and particularly the Municipal Structures Act (1998) and the Municipal Systems Act (2000) clearly oblige municipalities to facilitate community participation in the affairs of local government with regard to planning, service delivery and performance management.  It is equally a responsibility of the municipal leadership to foster harmonious relations between the Council and the local communities through reciprocal rights and duties. To this end, ward committees were established as a forum for community participation in the context of a participatory democracy for all local citizens, irrespective of party affiliation.

Whether out of audacious ignorance or downright arrogance, the councillor in question made a mockery of our laws and in the process violated other people’s rights and helped sow seeds of future conflicts among the people she is supposed to be representing. The singing of politically partisan songs and the disparaging references to members of opposition parties was in very bad taste.

However, the shameless and misleading tendency to enumerate perceived successes as having been made possible through the benevolence of a political party and not via allocation of state resources is equally worthy of a barb. It is perhaps too much to ask for a bit of common decency among some grassroots politicians when political stakes are high. But we want to believe that the BCM leadership would find it equally repellent and embarrassing that one among their ranks actively engaged in all this tomfoolery and even attempted to incite violence against a community member who in the humble belief in the word and letter of our laws, stood to ask a question. Some of the choice epithets used to silence the ‘wayward comrade’ were; a traitor and a counter-revolutionary. For what its worth, the poor guy is a supporter of the party in question!

In spite of the wide latitude offered by the relevant pieces of legislation, we will keep our expectations modest in these seemingly perilous times. But at the very least, bearing in mind, there is life beyond the general election and that we still want politically stable communities, the political leadership should use ward committees to promote political tolerance and mutual respect and not as tools for partisan political skirmishes. In this way, faith will be restored in this key forum for community participation and ward committees will hopefully cease being regarded as mere extensions of dominant political parties.

Be fair. Won’t you?        

The Transformer Vol. 15 No. 2 Apr-May 2009