Mabila Mathebula
What is common between Mogale City and Alabama? Mogale City is historically and commercially known as the Cradle of Humankind and the latter is known as the Cradle of the Confederacy.
And yet, the residents or ratepayers of Mogale City, who are the critical stakeholders, feel that they are not solicitously cradled by the intransigent and incompetent municipality.
Fossil records indicate that this city was the cradle of human evolution, but now, it is the cradle of misgovernance and gross inhumanity. The residents now embrace Kwame Nkrumah’s dictum that: “We prefer to govern or misgovern ourselves, to servitude in tranquility.”
Slaveholders who were never inclined strongly to abolitionist views were destitute of compassion. Slaves were cruelly treated, it was unheard of to treat slaves as if they were exotic flowers or China vases.
In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher wrote: “The slave-owner can whip his refractory slave to death – the capitalist can starve him to death.” Simply put, slaves never had rights and they were treated like emotionless beings. Mogale City is devoid of punctilious leadership.
On September 22, 2023, I wrote in The Star: “We are riding a load-shedding roller-coaster, and yet the electricity bill is unreasonably high. Water and electricity are variable costs but they are treated as fixed costs by our municipalities. Why implement electricity-saving strategies in your home when the city does not acknowledge your efforts?
“We are sitting on a time bomb and the day it will blow up, we will be left with embedded shrapnel. The municipalities must minimise the casualities by doing the right thing or doing things right.”
Professor Anthon Turton’s observation was more instructive, “I know of no other entity in the world that expects a consumer of its product to use less of their product but still expects them to pay more for it.”
Notably, our rates and tax bills have tripped and most of the ratepayers are either pensioners or unemployed. To add injury to the wound, one’s vote does not change the status quo. How I wish one was an American!
The Americans have acknowledged that most households were financially crippled after Covid-19. The former US president Barack Obama said: “If you want a president who will advocate for the poor and the marginalised, vote Kamala Harris. If want a president who understands the financial consequences of Covid-19, vote Kamala Harris.”
Here we have nowhere to run to, high electricity bills are forced down our throats by the intransigent government. In South Africa, a vote is not something substantial but superficial, it is not something useful for the citizen but it is like the ornamental trinkets of life.
I do not know if those in power at our municipalities are ‘political latecomers’. In the eighties, people rejected the 99-year lease in the township and started a rent boycott. People were tired of being treated as sojourners in the country of their birth.
If this situation goes unchecked, the rates and tax boycotts will kick in. When government decisions do not make any sense, people resort to boycotts. Even the law-abiding citizens, when they are at the end of their tether, they join the struggle.
Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from Covid-19 to freedom, we may have overlooked the fact that the masses of our people are still struggling financially.
William J.H. Boetcker said: “You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.” Simply put, you cannot help the poor by destroying the middle class. The middle class now feels the stinging pain of misgovernance and there is no Kamala Harris to run to.
We are all sitting on this time bomb which can explode at any time. Our local authorities can take a leaf out of the Montgomery bus boycott in the US. In Montgomery, Alabama, the “Cradle of the Confederacy.” An Afro-American seamstress named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus so a white passenger could have it.
This woman defied the bus driver even though she knew that under the segregation law of Montgomery and Alabama, bus drivers had police powers. Rosa Parks was arrested.
On December 5, she was convicted and fined $14, provoking some 5 000 Afro-Americans to gather at a Baptist church to begin what they called “a moral and spiritual passive resistance”. “Stay off the buses” was their cry, and that of the pamphlets with which they flooded black schools, churches, and neighbourhoods.
We must brace ourselves for a moral and spiritual passive resistance from the middle class and the white community. The bus boycott became an American legend. Rosa Parks is a folk hero. King is a martyr.
Author and life coach Mabila Mathebula has a PhD in Construction Management.