As bizarre as it is to continually have to hear and grudgingly abide the ANC and its playgroup, the Youth League, in the Western Cape keep insisting in orotund, asinine and chest-beating ways, that they will make the province 'ungovernable.' (I temporarily place the word in brackets for loss of a grip on reality in trying to determine how to interpret this intelligently). All this because the party is; rightfully so actually; frustrated and annoyed over poor service delivery in Cape townships. Nowhere in the country's nine provinces and more than 200 municipalities would even the most assiduous investigative reporter, researcher and opposition party spin doctor find a perfect delivery of services. In fact, I suggest (boldly!) that we do away with the word 'perfect' altogether, strike if from the vocabulary of local government and substitute it with a more real word, like 'satisfactory'.
Things are far from where they should ideally be in Cape Town and the Western Cape, much like the rest of the country. Poverty seethes and grows healthily in the form beggars, homeless people, street urchins and engulfing and townships looming on the fringes of the 'leafy, white suburbs' (as the ANCYL so ineloquently defines them). A personal example, down the street from my apartment in Woodstock, itself one of the Mother City's more salt-of-the-earth neighbourhood, there's proper, real life, patch of poverty - a grouping of shacks and wendyhouses, slap-bang in the middle of this fast gentrifying suburb. So believe you me, I am regularly reminded of that grim reality of penury shared by millions and how lucky I am to have evaded similar circumstances..
But why of lordy why doesn't the ANC, which (mis)rules the Eastern Cape, a close, uncomfortable neighbour of Zillestan (that now cliched mocking conflation of the Western Cape and its feisty premier, Hellen Zille often employed in public speeches by tripartite alliance leaders) kick up a bit of a fuss and a huff over the seemingly never-ending deterioration of even the most basic of services in that province? Why don't they also resolve; as the party in the Western Cape has - to evaluate all ANC councillors and members of the provincial legislature to gauge their performance - a refreshingly concrete, constructive way to try and improve service provision and, of course not to forget that other cynical ulterior motive, to win back the Cape come the next elections. Why can't the ANC kindergarteners, who liberally puff out their chests and threateningly whine over inadequate service delivery in the Cape, also turn the mirror on the Eastern Cape, where surely that dire state the region finds itself imprisoned in will stare miserably straight back at them? Why not threaten to make that province ungovernable too, if your real concerns are over service delivery and not winning that perpetual political-football game that is the Western Cape.
Week after week newsrooms are bombarded with tales of woe when it comes to the Western Cape's eastern 'bumpkin' cousin and its emaciated condition. Yet no protest marches are being rustled and bussed in by the ruling ANC in the province to the local legislature to issue ultimatums, lists of grievances and memoranda of demands, all of which can be summed up in one blustering, over-inflated threat by the League as "Or else we'll make the province ungovernable!" Could this lack of a backlash by the League there be because just maybe it's too embarrassed, perhaps even ashamed, of the abysmal state of the Eastern Cape? Maybe it's because the League daren't adjust the mirror too much for fear of accidentally focusing squarely on the ANC and how it can't seem to rehabilitate the province? The true reflection would be too ugly a sight for the League to bare.
A rare exception to the above-illustrated hypocrisy of the ANCYL, is the body's Limpopo branch actually taking a stand on a service delivery dilemma there by speaking out over the textbook dumping scandal. The League has spoken in angry tones on the fiasco, but as far as I can determine it has never once threatened Cassel Mathale's administration with tantrum-moans of making Limpopo 'ungovernable' because of poor delivery. Nope, there too is a truth perhaps just a bit too sore to endure. And so the ANCYL clumsily and conveniently avoids provinces where the burning issues of rolling out services are as ugly as can be seen in the Cape, where the DA does makes mistakes. But rarely without the ANC doing the same and in some cases makes uglier mistakes.
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