However, what has happened is that there are, within the various sectors, disparate groups who function autonomously but who also want a share of the whole. Each group, naturally, has its own goals and agendas.

Furthermore, EVERYTHING in our town is political and the three main parties are all extremely active.

Interestingly enough, our town has recently faced two major crises – one around the Secondary School and one which is currently happening around a national road project. In both instances, Cope have been the main instigators of the problem. This has meant that the ANC and the DA have had to work together in order to solve the problems, which is a first for this town.

This then answers your first question. To answer your second question, is more complicated. What I have identified (and you must just bear with me, as I only moved to this town 9 months ago and became involved in politics and community affairs 6 months ago), is that where there is a common enemy, be it Cope, the municipality, outside contractors etc. it is very easy to get the community to work together. Adversity can be a unifying factor and to find one common purpose makes life a lot easier (and people more amenable to working together).

I also attempt to take all politics out of meetings. Once we remove party affiliations, we begin to understand that we all want the same things for our community. I am hoping that by bringing the message that our community is one community and not a cluster of disparate groups, we can start to work for a common purpose. At every meeting I attend, I tell people that for now we are one community. In 2011 we can start our political “war” but until then we need to work together and not against each other to solve our problems.

So far, whenever I have addressed meetings with this message, I have found that everyone is far more inclined to listen to each other and to work together.

But, as I mentioned, I am still relatively new to all of this political stuff, so my outlook might change over time. I hope not. I truly believe that we can all work together to uplift and build our town.

I will thank you also for identifying what strikes me as being a potential strength that the electorate enjoys at local governmental level: the capacity to (a) become more initimately involved in the designs which impact upon their lives and thus (b), ensure fairer, more useful processes.

I do have two rather unpleasant questions though. And I will completely understand if you would prefer not to answer them. The first question is: when the community takes a more active role, how high, in your experience, is the incidence of in-fighting?

And the second questions is: if in-fighting is not infrequent, how do you typically resolve disputes?

Thank you once again for sharing your views and experience.

I agree with your solution and have just returned from a meeting with members of our community wherein we agreed that we need to take back some of our own power from our municipality and begin to manage ourselves.

This has two very positive effects:

In the first instance, by self-governing in certain issues, the people begin to accept some level of accountability for their lives. By controlling the outcomes of certain things such as the job allocation for the unemployed, the community ensures that fairness comes a key criteria and nepotism and cronyism is (to a degree) eliminated.

Secondly, by reducing the absolute control of the councilors, the community can ensure that the councilors become more accountable to the people they are supposed to serve. In other words, by managing certain aspects of what happens in the town, the power to appoint key individuals to jobs, withhold information on tenders etc. is removed from the hands of only a few and given to the community as a whole. Dissemination of information becomes markedly easier and the whole community, by participating at all levels becomes better informed.

I will let you know how things work out on this.

As for your comments regarding the Hlophe affair, I could not agree more. It is most disconcerting to know that at least one individual in a high level of the judiciary is a liar and that we may never know who it is. That is untenable.

I would just say that while relocation may be necessary on one set of facts, we surely cannot assume as much. Given the content of the Breaking New Ground policy, it seems quite clear that it will have to be established that relocation is imperative in the light of the prevailing circumstances.

I will also thank you for one specific point which you made: formal housing cannot accomodate the numbers that squatter camps can unless one opts for building upwards. I would like to ask though: could a fairly well-conceived plan to build multistorey apartment blocks not serve as a decent enough solutions? Could one not identify the principal draw backs of multistorey blocks and try to meet them?

You seem to make out the followinh problems at local government level in your town: that officials are not held accountable for failure to discharge their function to serve as channels of communication between stakeholders and decision makers. Further, that the stakeholers are quite apathetic insofar as they fail to organise or support attempts to do so. And in addition, people tend to see to their own interests by scoring political points through venturing unrealistic promises upon which they predictably struggle to deliver.

None the above problems give themselves to straightforward solutions. Actually, one of the underlying causes of the problems appears to be the human element which is notoriously difficult to resolve: people become discouraged, ambitious people over step the bounds of responsible campaigning to get what they want, people could care less about an electorate that lack the means to press for accountability.

I think that the electorate’s tendency to apathy is rather a consequence of a lack of accountability, transparency and also the sense that the decision makers do not actually listen. So I think that a solution – the content of which I think ought to be determined by way of some or other sort of incremental process – could involve the determination of alternative but lawful means to hold officials accountable.

Let me unpack this fairly tentative solution further with an example: it is markedly clear that at least one judge in the Holphe matter is lying. A complete win to my mind would be the impeachment of whichever judge or judges dared to lie so publically and shamelessly. But failing that, I think that exposing the scoundrel (even if impeachment does not ultimately ensue) would be preferable to the suppression of the affair which the JSC sought to engineer. Exposure in such an instance amounts to something of an impefect species of accountability.

Perhaps stakeholders may look at lawful species of accountability which, quite regrettably, fall shy of the ideal.

http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71654?oid=142623&sn=Detail

Indeed, the Government could have done better and should have engaged more meaningfully with the residents. However, the government has (or is supposed to) balance the public interest with the individual (or community) interests. E.g. one of the complaints of the Joe Slovo community was that 30% of the houses would be allocated to ‘backyard dwellers’ from Langa. Whatever the outcome of the case would be some injustice would be done

Now, the latest news is not sanity – but economics prevails: the relocation and upgrading is probably too expensive. What if nothing happens further – will the present state of affairs in Joe Slovo – makeshift buildings in appaling conditions – fires etc continue?

PS And isn’t Delft 15 km away and not a ‘far away’ 20 km?

Your suggestions are extremely valid, and are, in fact, all in place. Deadlines are provided, stakeholders are identified and talks are initiated.

However, at a grass-roots level (i.e. local government level) there are two main problems, which I will identify making reference to what I experience daily in our town, as that is my frame of reference.

From the government’s side, our town has two Councilors who represent our ward on the municipality. All communication is supposed to be directed from the municipality (and higher up the chain) via the Councilors to the ward committee or directly to the community. This seldom happens. The impact assessment to which I referred earlier was open to all stakeholders for comment with a deadline by which submissions could be made. I was provided with a copy only because I was approached by some concerned residents who requested that I make a submission on their behalf. I chair various committees in our town and am, therefore, a stakeholder in several capacities. I was never forwarded the document. Only two submissions were made on this plan. The one I drafted for the concerned residents and one I drafted on behalf of my organisation. It appears that no other stakeholders have even seen this document.

On the flip side, I have had cause on several occasions to call all stakeholders to a meeting to form a committee around various issues in our town. We have approximately 45 stakeholders listed (of which 24 are churches). At one meeting, 2 stakeholders sent representatives and at another, we had 8 represented. There is a general apathy that exists in our community. It is easier to complain than to actually effect change.

To add one more dimension to the problem, everything is politicised and everyone is out to score political points. This further complicates all consultation processes immensely, especially following the elections as parties are attempting to match the promises they made to their electorate in the lead-up to the elections.

There are no easy answers to these problems, but I do feel that part of the problem with our government, at all levels, is lack of transparency and accountability. Our councilors are a prime example of this as they do not report back to council on issues in our town, do not report back to the community and when confronted about things they have not done, profess to know nothing about it.

But I do wonder whether the proper course for investigation after determining this problem is to consider whether any approaches allow for both (a) eliciting input from affected parties and (b) the desirability of actually making headway.

I would tentatively suggest a line of thought that could eventually disclose a solution: one could at once (i) fix the time frame for consultation (but with the possibility of extending it on sufficient cause shown) so as to render it easier for government to make headway and (ii), still employ various measures to safeguard the interests of affected parties.

Perhaps the solution could contemplate three features to ensure that government did not either weasel out of earnestly consulting or fail to consult at all. First, the relevant body could be obliged to maintain effective channels of communications between government and the affected parties. Secondly, government may owe some sort of duty to (a) take reasonable steps to identify interested parties and (b) initiate consultation with them. Thirdly, the pertinent body could develop a suitable definition of ‘consultation’ which could effectively rule out the possibility of token talks.

Let me stress that I venture only suggestions here. Actually, some of the foregoing features already appear problematic. The basic point, however, is that I mean to suggest that one way forward is to try to balance competing interests. And those interests are the desirability of sincere consultation with affected parties on the one hand, and the appeal of removing certain shackles so as to enable government to realise its objects on the other.

But the foregoing notwithstanding, I think the Joe Slovo bit is mostly a sad and disgraceful affair – and that both government and the Court stuffed up.