There is a line in the advertisement for the new CEO of Eskom that struck me when I read it: "stabilising an organisation in crisis". Isn't this precisely what we need for the entire South Africa?
It is February, and President Cyril Ramaphosa has yet to address the nation's crippling power crisis that is causing hundreds of businesses to close their doors, exacerbating the country's already scandalous unemployment number.
For Ramaphosa, it is business as usual, and he will probably tell us everything is hunky dory with the government's so-called emergency power programme when he delivers his State of the Nation Address on Thursday.
The new Eskom CEO must be a "leader with unquestionable integrity and ethics" who can "turn around commercially and operationally challenged organisations".
They need a postgraduate degree in engineering or economics, a "solid track record" in managing "crises", and be responsible for "building an ethos of excellence" in the organisation.
The successful candidate understands the workings of a "complex environment" and how to lead a "business turnaround".
Isn't this the type of person you would like to see at the helm of South Africa Incorporated?
It is six days into February, and Ramaphosa has yet to reshuffle his Cabinet and get rid of the dead wood, the anti-constitutionalists, and incompetent executive members. It is clear that the ANC, not Ramaphosa, is in charge of the reshuffle, despite the president having vast and clear powers under the Constitution.
If Ramaphosa cannot even get rid of his deputy, David Mabuza, who has really done nothing in four years and willingly wanted to vacate his office for greener pastures in Mpumalanga last week, we shouldn't expect him to make inspirational, unconventional appointments to his Cabinet, whenever that moment arises.
After his re-election as ANC president in December, his supporters told us that we would see a different Ramaphosa taking charge of a "renewed" ANC in January.
Well, all we have seen so far is Ramaphosa's party making deals with the country's dodgiest politicians in the EFF and Patriotic Alliance to take back power in Johannesburg, and soon Ekurhuleni and elsewhere. Is this the so-called "renewal" Ramaphosa's supporters sang about at Nasrec?
We won't know because Ramaphosa is not talking to us.
On Sunday, EFF leader Julius Malema, who is on trial for criminal offences, explained his party's deal with the ANC at the EFF's provincial conference in the Free State.
"Here, in the Free State, we are negotiating with the Metsimaholo Local Municipality because there we can also go in, but we refuse to go in under the ANC, so we came up with a new strategy now that we would rather have a small party mayor because we can't have each other and serve under each other.
"We would rather have MMC positions and run our own governments, so we are gonna do that in the Maluti-a-Phofung Local Municipality."
Fantastic. So presumably, this is what Ramaphosa's "renewal agenda" looks like to take back municipalities: cosy up with a criminally-implicated party, appoint a puppet mayor from a minion party and divide the spoils between the ANC and EFF (and sometimes PA) to run as mini "governments", in Malema's words.
This is clearly a recipe for disaster and a desperate, last attempt to access these municipal departments' budgets and procurement systems.
I'm not arguing the DA-led coalitions were perfect; they were far from ideal, and the DA has practically been in charge of Johannesburg and Tshwane for the largest part of the past seven years. But it's telling that one of the first things the new ANC-concocted city government in Johannesburg did was issue letters that would end forensic investigations into corruption.
And it's fair to say the DA-led city governments had to spend lengthy times and large amounts trying to undo the ANC's poor governance during the state capture years.
Oh, how I wish for a president with "unquestionable integrity and ethics" to turn around this beautiful, but "commercially and operationally challenged" country.
It's going to be a long 15 months before the long-suffering citizens of South Africa can remove the ANC and its new bedmates from power.
No comments:
Post a Comment