Panyaza Lesufi’s grand farce

Gauteng’s state of the province address (Sopa) kicked off on Monday with a grand event at the Tshwane Automotive SEZ.

There’s our esteemed premier, ready to cut the tape for the special economic zone. Only, he can’t get the ribbon snipped; he’s wrestling gamely with a pair of apparently blunt scissors. By this point, the ribbon has already been cut by someone else, yet Lesufi is still grabbing at it, admirably determined to get the job done. He catches hold of it, wrangles it a bit further, and eventually finds success. Oh, how we laughed. 

Then a quick sod-turning event, with beribboned shovels in an already-dug pile of dirt (who knew ground breaking didn’t actually involve breaking ground?). And on to the parade. 

It’s this that really takes the cake. It begins with a cacophony that would be the envy of the most excitable of hadedas: an invisible choir in fierce competition with a marching band – complete with tuba. It’s touch and go, but you’ll be happy to know the marching band eventually wins out. Must be the tuba. 

Then our indefatigable premier saunters into view, escorted front and back by the police. Cue snappy marching. He takes his place on the podium with Gauteng speaker Morakane Mosupyoe, who’s incongruously kitted out for a ball. 

The podium has seemingly been set up for one reason and one reason only: so Lesufi can cast his imperious gaze over a parade in his honour. Well, parade and parking lot; this is, after all, an automotive zone. 

Time for the march-past. First comes the band. Then a sea of uniforms: police (with rifles), traffic police, metro police, bright green uniforms of indeterminate origin, and the police’s K9 unit. Not to be missed: what looks like the amaPanyaza wearing white gloves. Eyes right, salute the premier, eyes front. And continue.  

It’s all very tinpot dictator. 

Given the spectacle, it’s no surprise that some unfortunate standing near the SABC mic seems unable to take it anymore. “It’s too much,” he says. “Close. Close now.” 

And that’s before the choir, small orchestra and muso performing at the address itself. Lord alone knows how much it all cost the taxpayer. 

Digging deep 

Now, the Sopa is a bit like the state of the nation address: a cherry-picking exercise, showcasing instances where the administration has succeeded, while quietly handing off the failures (no mention, for example, of the train wreck that is the department of social development, despite the vital service it provides). Lesufi had to really dig deep for some of those wins, going into the granular detail of individual cases of success. I’ll spare you the minutiae. 

In the main, he focused on the snappily named “G13” – the 13 issues plaguing Gauteng – explaining what his government has done and offering some handwaving on what it plans to do. Break those 13 categories down, and they cover infrastructure (including energy and water), jobs, crime, transport, health care, education and housing. 

The water crisis is apparently in safe hands. The province is moving two of its pump stations to the tender care of City Power and Eskom to arrest the power interruptions that affect service delivery. It feels suspiciously like passing the buck. And as someone who spent this week waiting on City Power to actually put the lights back on, I’m not convinced. 

The actual electricity plan seems less half-baked – though the province hasn’t come close to last year’s target of cushioning its residents from two stages of load-shedding. There are various plans to bring additional megawatts onto the grid, including building solar plants and the expansion of the Kelvin power station. No quick fix, in other words. 

Other infrastructure projects include a plan to build South Africa’s largest shopping mall in Langlaagte (because Joburg needs another mall), and a new and improved concert venue on the doorstep of the FNB Stadium. Which is itself a concert venue. White elephant, anyone? 

When it comes to jobs, there could be some interesting goings-on. Lesufi spoke of a couple of projects that, he says, have attracted a few billions in investment: the Mekgerereng Smart City project and the Vaal SEZ and Aerotropolis. There’s also a R220bn infrastructure pipeline – though it’s unclear if this is a wish list or if the funds are in fact guaranteed. 

As for the 271,000 permanent jobs these initiatives will apparently create, including 125,000 for the expansion of the Gautrain, well, I’d hesitate to call a construction job permanent. That wipes 38,000 jobs off the table. And as Ed Stoddard points out on Daily Maverick, there’s no way the Gautrain will account for 125,000 jobs; there were about 34,000 local jobs on the original Gautrain project. So that could be another 91,000 down. In any event, where will the money come from, given the province’s lack of cash? And to simply assert that there will be 60,000 new jobs in tourism and hospitality doesn’t make it so. In other words, not much help for the 2.5-million unemployed residents of the province. 

‘Smart’ solutions 

Crime, well, there’s nothing essentially new here. There was much tap-dancing around individual criminals apprehended and syndicates smashed. And Gauteng has apparently discovered that surveillance is important to managing crime. Crime intelligence. Who’d have thought. 

There are small wins, though. The airwing – crime-fighting helicopters and drones – has been involved in 292 ops and has, among others, recovered 485 stolen vehicles (and 56 cellphones). And there’s now going to be law enforcement co-operation across metros.

Crime is down in Gauteng – but it’s also down nationally, perhaps suggesting a broader trend rather than province-specific interventions. And Gauteng remains among the country’s crime hotspots – and it leads by murder stats – so there’s that. 

You also have to question the province’s commitment to crime prevention when it cut the community safety budget from R2.6bn to R2.3bn, as Build One South Africa’s Ayanda Allie told Daily Maverick. 

As for those of you navigating Gauteng’s moon craters on the way to work, you’ll be happy to know that the province intends to fix potholes (like we haven’t heard that one before). It’s even “unleashing” an intelligent traffic system to keep up with potholes and vandalised traffic lights, and ensure business keeps moving. And a smart monitoring system to prevent cable theft. Ever the technophile, Lesufi remains set on technological solutions for everyday problems. There’s even “new technology” to alert the authorities when a new informal settlement springs up. As if people wouldn’t notice. 

Lesufi tells us he plans to build 18 new schools in the province – but by the EFF’s Nkululeko Dunga’s estimate, that’s a drop in the ocean when you consider we need an additional 55,000 classrooms, City Press reports. And the city’s plan to build a new mega-city looks like another white elephant in the making when you take into account Joburg’s parlous record of actually completing infrastructure projects – including the unfinished Montrose mega development in Randfontein. In any event, the supposed 81,000 housing “opportunities” of the Grand Central Mixed Housing mega-project are not nearly enough to plug the 1.3-million housing backlog. 

Lesufi’s grand statement in his speech that the government will be partnering with the private sector (there’s a lot of that) for 11 new hospitals is at odds with the text of the Sopa, which simply says that 11 hospital licences have been applied for, as the DA’s Solly Msimanga told City Press. That’s hardly the same thing. And there’s no mention of the 18 hospitals it was apparently going to buy from the private sector last year, Msimanga added. 

In all, Lesufi’s address was two hours and six minutes of hot air; recycled thinking and grandiose promises that seem to have little practical or impact – particularly to resolve the immediate hardships facing the residents of the province. 

You have to hand it to the SABC for sometimes getting things very, very right though. Even if that’s entirely accidental. For the first 48 minutes of its Sopa feed, the strap running across the screen proclaimed this “The sate of the nation”. You would indeed have been sated to a point of nausea, even if you were of an appetite for pomp, pageantry, tedium and the most turgid of prose. With a side order of farce. 

_{Top image: The dry run of the parade ahead of Panyaza Lesufi’s state of the province address. Picture: Gauteng Provincial Government, X.com.}