After the Bell: The new Joburg council goes nuts

As every manager knows, change management is an art. I remember seeing a cartoon showing a speaker talking to a whole bunch of people. She asks, “Who wants change?” and everybody puts up their hands. Then she asks, “Who wants to change?” and nobody puts up their hands. And then she asks, “Who wants to lead change?” and the crowd vanishes.

Why is change so difficult? Some reasons are obvious: familiarity (in fact) breeds security and certainty. You hit a groove and it feels comfortable and predictable. That’s worth a lot.

But some reasons are harder to see, particularly if you are rooted in the system. Another cartoon depicts a board meeting with someone saying, “What if we just go on as before and something miraculous happens?” It’s like my favourite quote of the week from comedian Conan O’Brien: “When all else fails, there’s always delusion.”

Change in government is particularly hard because it comes with its own peculiarities. I read one analysis that said part of the problem is mindset. People in government are focused on what is broken and how to fix it, rather than on how to do more of what is working. But the government has other problems too: entrenched party officials in the bureaucracy, entrenched and protected employees, and entrenched attitudes about what politics is supposed to be about.

But in SA, the problems of change are really intense because, in part, the process requiring changes in government is unfamiliar to us because of the ANC’s dominance over (or, dare I say, entrenchment in) the political process. But you know, we better get used to it because I suspect changes are going to start happening quickly now.

Nothing illustrates this better than the recent ousting of the DA’s Joburg mayor, Mpho Phalatse. Just for the record, this is the country’s most important business centre and home to more than six million people. But the parties involved have treated the process of running the city like a pack of hyenas fighting over a fresh kill.

Two political issues are at the core of the problem. First is the ANC’s belief that there is only one acceptable ruling party, and that is them. And you can see why: the ANC’s electoral majority was overwhelming for more than 22 years when it had absolute power. The party still gets the most votes in Johannesburg. In the 2016 election, its support dropped to 45% of the electorate during the State Capture period. The DA almost caught the party that year, getting 38% of the vote. At this point, the DA won control of the Joburg council with the support of the EFF.

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The second political issue is that having got so close, the DA then blew it, somehow managing to alienate some of its most promising members, including the then mayor, Herman Mashaba. In the 2021 election, Mashaba’s party stood on its own and got 13% of the vote. But apart from that, and the fact that the ANC lost even more support, little has changed. The DA and Mashaba’s party, ActionSA, together got the same support as the DA got on its own in 2016.

With the ANC down to 33% of the vote — still the largest single party due to the DA’s ineptitude — the party can only rule with the support of the EFF and a range of smaller parties. Power has shifted from the largest parties to the smallest. We are now deep in the nutty period.

What happened then is extremely instructive. Phalatse was voted in as mayor, as you might expect since the DA and ActionSA are, one presumes, more or less allied and together came pretty close to a majority of the vote. But recently the coalition has fallen apart mainly because, it turns out, the newly rampant Patriotic Alliance demanded control of the economic ministry — all the better to grab contracts and tenders, one suspects. The DA refused to give it to them, and the coalition crumbled.

So what happens next? Well, it turns out, the new power brokers want not simply control, but total control. Acting City Manager Bryne Maduka sent out a letter four days after his appointment saying all major strategic decisions taken by all the 13 entities in the city after September 2022 were suspended. Just like that. I am not making this up. And no board meetings were allowed to take place without his express permission. Apparently, he backtracked a bit, but how much we don’t yet know. The astounding letter is available here.

I mean, I ask you; this is a city, once responsible for nearly 10% of the continent’s GDP, that is now failing to provide hospitals with water. One of the affected organisations is, of course, Johannesburg Water. The intention is to freeze several forensic investigations and senior management suspensions for misconduct. That’s why the letter is backdated to September last year.

This action stimulated an extraordinary response from an organisation not known for its political interventions, the Institute of Directors in South Africa (IoDSA). In a wonderful example of mammoth understatement, the IoDSA CEO, Parmi Natesan, said if true, “It’s hard not to see this move as a departure from good governance.” Hahaha.

She also said it was “questionable” whether any appointed board could be prevented from discharging its legal duties. “King IV makes it clear that boards should hold as many meetings as necessary to discharge their obligations, so presumably they cannot be prevented from doing that,” she said in a statement.

Well, you know, obviously.  As my colleague Rebecca Davis tells us here, there are a whole bunch of reasons why coalitions are falling apart. As she points out, SA needs to get used to political change and develop a ruleset to deal with it. But at root, as long as elected representatives care more about themselves than their electorate, no stock of rules for coalitions is going to help. DM/BM