Someone must account, but we can all do without the 'frivolous motions'

“The frivolous motions of confidence at the local government level since 2016 have weakened municipalities and left them on the precipice; a province like Gauteng that produces nearly 40% of the GDP will take the country down with it if lessons are not learnt from local government.”

This warning by the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions in Gauteng is indeed very concerning. And having experienced, or merely watched from a distance the kind of chaos that accompanies such “frivolous motions” in the affected municipalities, no citizen in their right minds would be happy at the prospect of this besetting their council or province. Cosatu Gauteng is, therefore, correct to be “deeply concerned” by the moves by the Democratic Alliance to unseat Premier Panyaza Lesufi, accusing him of “saying much but failing to deliver, committing unlawful actions and avoiding accountability”.

We all know that the straw that broke the camel’s back was the findings about the so-called AmaPanyaza, who are to be retrained and “repurposed” or “reconfigured”. And there is no longer any debate that somebody made a big mistake in setting up and deploying the Crime Prevention Wardens. The debate about legality or illegality has been put to bed. What remains is for somebody to say what steps will or were taken to hold whoever made the mistakes that led to irregular and unlawful action.

Without calling for any individual to be thrown under the bus, standing in the middle of this “point-scoring” match that reached boiling point last week, I would argue that someone from the Department of Community Safety needs to account, or be made to account, for acting inconsistently with Sections 41(1)(h) and (g) of the Constitution. That someone was paid handsomely with taxpayers’ money for doing his or her job and clearly failed not just the premier but the province’s residents.

In this column last week, I thanked the premier for accepting the Public Protector’s findings and recommendations, which will help the province correct the mistakes and move on to continue to fight crime.

What Gauteng needs is not more confusion and instability, but clarity, certainty and head-on tackling of our crises that include crime.