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The potent weapon of non-payment as resistance in South Africa, then and now

Anthony Turton
By Anthony Turton
28 Nov 2024
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Because municipalities are not being paid and are cash starved, water boards – Amatole, Umhlatuze, Rand Water, Umgeni, Magalies Water and many others – are not being paid. This makes a catastrophe quite easily predictable.

It is said by people wiser than me that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Whether this is valid or not is an open question, but there is certainly a lot of evidence to suggest that it is true.

Today we live in a world awash with information. We can safely say that at no time in the history of humankind was more information available to the average citizen than it is today.

In fact, we can say that the entire body of cumulative knowledge that has enabled mankind to thrive is now instantly available to anyone with a mobile phone, access to the internet and Google.

Therefore, it is theoretically possible for us to learn the lessons from that cumulative history and consequently avoid the pitfalls evident in past events. I have been thinking a lot about this lately, as I have embarked on a writing initiative that will hopefully capture my entire life experience in the water sector and national security domain in the sincere hope that as a nation, we can collectively make informed choices.

We stand, as a nation, on the precipice of calamity as we witness a slow-onset disaster unfold before our very eyes. Ironically, much of this is predictable which is why I have been writing so much about it in a frantic effort to document our journey from the oppression of apartheid to the hope of a new future in which each citizen can reach their full potential as a human being.

This was the promise of democracy in 1994. But that dream has remained elusive, and we are yet to find the promised land in which prosperity can be enjoyed by all, and not just the wealthy and connected few.

That journey starts in the dusty streets during the township wars of the 1980s. Those were heady times, when the rocket fuel of change was pulsing through the veins of the nation, and the youth leadership was active, visionary and engaging.

1976 Soweto uprising


Tasting the sweet fruit of liberation after the Carnation Revolution in Portugal caused an instant victory for Frelimo in Mozambique and the MPLA in Angola, the youth mobilised in Soweto wanting the same in their country.

The uprising that took place in 1976 was unstoppable, spontaneous, and a pivotal moment. Loose molecules of anger, drifting across a sea of volatile discontent, erupted across the country. This overwhelmed the police and triggered the outflow of capital from South Africa on a linear trajectory and on an unprecedented scale.

The revolutionary leadership had found the Achilles heel of an oppressive state that had the most powerful army in Africa at that time. That structural vulnerability was easy to attack, and so the revolutionary forces instinctively focused their collective energies, like swarms of drones on a Ukrainian battlefield, on making South Africa ungovernable.

The strategy was eloquently simple, but also potent when applied to the township economy where most citizens lived. Make the state ungovernable by withholding payment for services.

And so the culture of non-payment was born as a potent weapon of the dispossessed in an asymmetrical war. We all know the outcome. The government that had the most powerful army on the continent of Africa withered away as taxpayers became weary of the burden that they alone carried in keeping the government afloat. Without revenues, local municipalities floundered and the homeland governments succumbed through the starvation of cash.

It was the fiscal crisis triggered by the Soweto uprising in 1976 that eventually saw an outflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) become minus 5% of the GDP from 1985 until 2000, and that created regime change.

So severe were the implications that a special operation was launched by the National Intelligence Service known as “Flair”, which managed to stabilise the outflow of FDI. Parts of this operation were written up by Dr Niel Barnard and T Wiese in the book Secret Revolution: Memoirs of a Spy Boss, published by Tafelberg in 2015, and I have written up different elements of that same operation in a text that will shortly be in the public domain.  



This brings us to the critical issue of the national crisis we face today. We know that Cape Town had a Day Zero crisis in 2019. We know that this had a devastating impact on the local economy. We know that it was averted, not because of a well-considered policy intervention by the government, but rather by the good fortune of rain that a roll of the dice favoured us with.

So much we know, but now for the unknown. We now see Day Zero crises unfold in Port Elizabeth and Durban, both coastal cities that are also epicentres of industrial activity that includes the motor car manufacturing capacity of the country.

To our shock, we see it now cascading across to Gauteng, which is home to three metros – Johannesburg, Pretoria and Ekurhuleni – which collectively house more than 40% of all citizens and produce more than 60% of the national GDP of the country. The reasons for this are complex, but understood by the country’s science, engineering and technology specialists.

However, and this is where it becomes serious, central to the unfolding slow-onset disaster we call the National Day Zero Crisis is the vulnerability caused by the non-payment of revenues by citizens.

Rich elite vs multitude of jobless


You see, as with the 1980s, we still have youth leadership that is active, visionary and engaging. But more importantly, we still have the culture of non-payment that remains a potent weapon of the dispossessed in an asymmetrical war against the gluttonous feeding at the trough that has created a super-rich elite, but also a growing multitude of jobless people with little hope of becoming part of the promise made in 1994.

History will simply repeat itself. There are more unemployed people today than there were in the 1980s, but there is also less capital available to create jobs.

More importantly, the domino effect of anger will now become a self-fulfilling prophecy as municipalities are unable to self-correct because they are insolvent.

Because municipalities are cash starved, they are unable to meet the wage bills of their employees, who have become accustomed to benefits the likes of which set them apart from the masses of the people, as the new elites who benefit from their proximity to the feeding trough of patronage.

It is precisely here that the train will come off the rails, because water boards – Amatole, Umhlatuze, Rand Water, Umgeni, Magalies Water and many others – are not being paid by the municipalities they supply. This makes a catastrophe quite easily predictable.

These water boards are all in crisis and some have already failed. They are the last line of defence standing between the anarchy of structural collapse and the anger of mass discontent already bubbling under the surface.

This is a serious matter.

I therefore call on all leadership to apply themselves to the task of social engineering that has shaped South Africa over the past century.

If leadership could convince the masses to withhold payment as a weapon of regime change in the 1980s, what would it take to make that same leadership willing to exhort their followers to restore the flow of cash into the coffers of the water boards, to keep them from collapsing?

Is the ruling elite even aware of its own vulnerability against this weapon of mass discontent – the simple act of withholding payment for services not received? DM

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