Dear Mmusi Maimane

When Creamer Media publishing editor Martin Creamer and I agreed that I would write this column, he said the column must not be smutty and it is not recommended that I write about politics.

I do not think I am breaking that rule now. What I would like to write about is the critical lack of engineering input into the government of this country. At very many municipalities throughout South Africa, there grew, over the past 40 years, a very strong core of competent engineers. These engineers chose to work for the safe employment at municipalities, since it was interesting and it allowed engineers to be of service to the community.

These municipal engineers had the dual role of both development and maintenance. They recognised that maintenance should be largely a municipal function (although parts of it could be subcontracted) and that development should be a municipality-guided function implemented by consulting engineers and contractors –

ideally, consultants and engineers from the local municipal community. A good municipal engineer at high level is definitely worth a couple of million rands a year. The engineer will be de facto a registered professional engineer and, consequently, has a legal responsibility to make sure that things are safe and working. Once you have the municipal system up and running, then, provided that certain standards are adhered to, it is not too difficult to keep things running smoothly. But one must be well aware that things can go off the rails too quickly – if you do not do regular maintenance, things fall out of hand. You run out of resources and the next moment there are potholes everywhere, as well as water leaks and electricity supply interruptions.

When the African National Congress (ANC) took over, it adopted the principle of cadre deployment. Wikipaedia defines cadre deployment thus: “The appointment by a government’s governing party of a loyalist to an institution as a means of circumventing public reporting lines and bringing that institution under the control of the party, as opposed to the State . . . In turn, that party advances its own interests ahead of those of the public.”

Let me put it this way: the ANC gave early retirement to a whole lot of highly qualified engineers and technicians and then gave engineering posts to many people who were ardent ANC supporters but knew absolutely nothing about engineering. The results were predictable: in municipalities like Mthatha, for years, the water would be off or the electricity would be off on a regular basis; service delivery collapsed.

The ANC finally realised (like a dinosaur that dimly realises that it is alive) that something had to be done. Consultants were needed. Consultants were appointed. But, regrettably, the consultants that were appointed were very seldom from the community. In vain did Truculent, Hopeful en Vernote wait for an appointment: these were dished out (apparently on a tender basis) to international firms that appointed black economic empower- ment (BEE) front people, all at hugely inflated prices and complete with a strong whiff in the air. The work was done but not enough of it – the municipal budgets suffered.

Further, owing to the displacement of historic revenue collection people from municipalities, the revenue to do maintenance and development work was small indeed. The ruling party knew that the majority of municipal income was from the sale of electricity. Consequently, it tried to create vehicles called regional electricity distributors, which would have collected the municipal income from electricity sales, kept some for themselves and given some to municipalities in general. Thus, the sales from one municipality would benefit another.

The ruling party failed to do its homework in this respect since, constitutionally, the collection of revenue from municipal sales is a municipal function.

Let us look now, Mr Maimane, to when the Democratic Alliance (DA), the party you lead, is in power. If. The ANC has a school teacher as Minister of Public Enterprises and a person with a Bachelor of Arts degree as Minister of Energy. Not an engineer in sight. But, yes, the same applies to the DA shadow Ministers. Graduates in African studies and United Nations Children’s Fund consultants. Mr Maimane, good luck. But why not try to get some real engineers on board at all levels? It cannot hurt; might help.