Letter From Mt Frere: With over 50% of municipal by-elections these days coming as a result of political killings of ward councillors, Zukile Majova looks at the reasons for this.
High unemployment in small towns especially for people who hold no formal education makes the jostling for seats in the councils increasingly dangerous.
How did we get here?
Just about every small town has a new mafia organisation called the Black Business Forum.
Initially set up to fight for a just system in the distribution of tenders in municipalities and ensuring big business partners up with local contractors in local projects, business forums have evolved into mafia-style organisations.
Too often ward councillors are beholden to these organisations to finance their political campaigns including ferrying voters to the voting stations on election day.
Councillors end up sitting in tender awarding committees or influencing decision making to benefit these tenderpreneurs resulting in state capture at municipal level.
Failure of government oversight in the awarding of tenders results in ward councillors becoming bigger than their boots and amassing wealth far beyond their monthly earnings.
In poor communities, it is councillors who decide who gets indigent allowances – including prepaid electricity, illuminating paraffin, RDP houses, food parcels and jobs in EPWP projects – from the local municipality.
Five by-elections in municipal wards take place in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape today.
The IEC said 20 candidates from 10 political parties and two independent candidates will contest the by-elections.
In Gauteng, Ward 29 in the Rand West City Municipality became vacant after the death of an ANC councillor and it’s the same story at Ward 53 in the City of Johannesburg.
In KZN, the death of a ward councillor for Ward 13 in uMvoti Municipality has resulted in today’s by-election.
Ward 10 in Mpumalanga’s Dr JS Moroka Municipality also became vacant because of the death of an ANC councillor.
An ANC councillor for ard 04 in the Kareeberg Municipality in the Northern Cape decided to resign, making the ward vacant and up for contest in today’s by-election.
