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My ward flips to the ANC after DA councillor blows R250-million on who knows what

Ferial Haffajee
By Ferial Haffajee
2 Nov 2021
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It’s an about-turn to how the rest of the Johannesburg election result is shaping.

Joburg Ricky Nair Ricky Kishore Nair has been fielded by the ANC as a resident with genuine roots in Johannesburg’s Ward 58. (Photo: Shiraaz Mohamed)



In 2011, the DA won Ward 58, one of Johannesburg’s oldest and most diverse wards. It was a marker of the party’s growth in former ANC strongholds.

The ward, which includes the heritage areas of Fordsburg, Fietas, Mayfair and Langlaagte, had been a centre of resistance to colonialism and apartheid. It had always been an ANC area as it had been home to the country’s leading activists.  

But poor governance and neglect saw it lost. After elections on Monday, 1 November, the ANC won the ward back, led by a candidate who has called the ward home for 41 years. Ricky Kishore Nair easily beat the DA candidate Yola Minnaar.  

Whereas the ANC headquarters previously parachuted candidates into the ward, this time the community had a say in which candidate the ANC put forward. Its list of criteria included a history of service, which Nair had. He is selfless and lives simply unlike previous ANC candidates, who saw the ward as an opportunity for rent extraction and to build patronage.  

And Nair won because the DA adopted the same culture and made exactly the same mistakes the ANC had when it lost the ward a decade ago.

It parachuted in candidate Alex Christians who adopted tactics of patronage and extraction.  He did not see to the basic failures in the ward because he never lived in it. Ward 58 is exciting and cosmopolitan but it is in an advanced state of failure as Daily Maverick has reported. Under Christians, the DA did not arrest this failure.

Instead, as Christians revealed to Daily Maverick last week, he focused on getting R250-million funds flowing, allegedly to the ward. But if you ask people who live there, that investment is invisible. The basics like crumbling sub-district electricity infrastructure, water, garbage collection and by-law enforcement had no investment or councillor attention. 

Vanity projects like over-priced parks, leases of public property to private businesses, a huge community centre — beautiful but a Covid-19 white elephant — and more are the DA’s legacy. This is not only a pattern in Ward 58 but across Johannesburg where the council sees its function as to build shiny new things rather than to care for the infrastructure and systems underpinning functioning government.

This is the path of patronage and rent extraction as councillors responsible for huge construction contracts can build support networks and get back-handers. It’s one of the patterns that has led to the destruction of local government for which incumbent parties are being punished at this election, which has seen the lowest turnout of any post-democratic South Africa. DM  

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