Politics.za

Jacob Zuma has said that he will be campaigning for the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal before the local elections in March 2006. This despite the ANC NEC trying to make him persona non grata in the ANC.

Now call me cynical but I have a feeling this will be less of Jacob Zuma campaigning for the ANC and more of Jacob Zuma campaigning for… well Jacob Zuma. If he’s going to get back in the ANC succession battle the local elections will be the first logical place to insert himself back into the hearts and minds of the ANC electorate before the ever important ANC NEC elections in 2007.

If Zuma does campaign and the ANC puts the kibosh on the IFP, which they might very well considering the state the IFP are in, it might give him some momentum going into 2007.

It’s not just glossy reports costing taxpayers millions, the salaries of top city management in Cape Town alone will cost R10 million this year. Now Cape Town Mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo said that those salaries are needed to “attract top people who had had experience in the private sector” which is true, in order to attract talent into government you need to pay them for their talent.

But if Cape Town municipal manager Wallace Mgoqi was in the private sector and was doing such a crap job as he is doing in the Cape Town municipality (N2 gateway project stalling, jewelery district tender fiasco, city parking contract going to obviously fronted BEE company, the list goes on… trust me) he would’ve been fired ages ago.

Instead he’s probably looking forward to his 25% of annual salary bonus.

Well if you thought renaming a few suburbs and streets was going to cause administrative nightmares does Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi have a doozy for you. Apparently the reduction of the number of provinces is firmly on the table.

That’s right. After spending millions of Rand building provincial government, constructing grandiose provincial legislatures and paying massive provincial civil service salaries (read the Sunday Times career section and you’d think the North West province was the largest employer in the country with the way they’re hiring) national government has decided “meh, maybe we don’t need them after all”. I mean the National Council of Provinces (the other house of parliament, or did you forget) is pretty much irrlevant these days anyway so let’s just get rid of the whole charade.

Someamongus over at South Africa Blog thinks that this is just a threat from the executive to get the provinces back into lock step and that’s a valid point. Of course the ANC national parliament has passed a few laws and then later had to go back and redraft them when it was clear the laws weren’t just going to work (remember the draft Immigration Act?), so this might just be the same thing on a much larger much more expensive scale.

Personally I think it might be the sign of a nervous ANC. The ANC knows that it’s biggest weakness heading into municipal elections in 2006 and national elections in 2009 is it’s lack of service delivery and it seems some in the ANC higher up beleive provincial government is probably getting in the way. From the article it seems Mufamadi believes service delivery can be done much more efficiently with only national government (providing the money) and local municipalities (doing the implementation). While this idea has some merit, it can be done without disbanding provinces and I get helluva nervous when something like ANC electoral strategy could be causing major constitutional rewrites.

The IEC has stated that in next years local municipal elections there will be no special voting. That is if you can not physically get to the polling station where you are registered you will not be able to vote.

But here’s a telling quote from IEC official Mawethu Mosery

We know that many people will suffer, but there is nothing we can do because special voting during local government elections is administratively impossible

Oh for pete’s sake it’s not “administratively impossible” because plenty of other countries manage to do it with no problems. Here’s how it works:

1. Have voters who will not be able to physically vote call an IEC hotline to ask for a postal voting card. Some identity verification is done (fax copy of ID, go to IEC office etc etc).
2. IEC sends a voting card with a return envelope to voter and explains that the card must be returned by the 15th April.
3. Cards returned on time are counted, which should not take long at all seeing as they’re expecting 200 000 people to be affected by these rules, and the voters are made ineligible to vote on March 1st (to avoid double voting).
4. Updated voters rolls are distributed to local election polling stations by 28th April.
5. Normal municipal voting takes place as per normal with postal votes being added to the totals.
6. Democracy prevails!

So when can I expect my call up to IEC HQ?

Mark your calendars! Municipal elections will take place on the 1st of March 2006.

This is gonna be a very revealing election. Firstly we’ll see if voter dissatisfaction with service delivery will actually translate to people not voting for the ANC (or not voting at all).

We’ll also see if voters still remember their distate for floor crossing. If they do expect to find some floor crossing Nats without a job, especially if Cape Town goes back to under DA control.

And thirdly we’ll see if Mbeki can get the ANC membership back under control and moving forward. I’m not sure how much control the ANC national organisation has over the local electoral lists but he’ll be trying to get anybody he feels is a threat to his plans out of any sort of position of influence as soon as possible and these elections will be the first opprotunity before the next ANC NEC is chosen in 2007.

Just a reminder that the 19th/20th of November is your absolutely last chance to register to vote. With the upcoming municipal elections (rumoured to be taking part during March 2006) promising to have the potential to do some serious shaking up in your local municipality you don’t want to be left out.

The IEC has all the details including a handy page to check if you’re already registered.