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JEREMY MAGGS: And it’s that politicking that David Potter refers to that informs our final story today. I want return to our coverage on the cholera crisis in Hammanskraal. While the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA) can argue about the degree of culpability, it’s a matter of public record that the ANC neglected the water situation in Hammanskraal for years, at least until 2010.
That’s the thinking of Mbhazima Shilowa, former Premier of Gauteng, former General Secretary of Cosatu (Congress of South African Trade Unions), and co-founder of the political party Cope. He says the ANC should be the last ones to talk and point fingers. It’s presumably, he says, one of the reasons why the people of Tshwane gave them the boot. There is no point, he goes on to say, in the DA telling the people of the area about a past that is well-documented.
It’s back to that point that Potter was making about toing and froing and pointing fingers. Mbhazima Shilowa, a very warm welcome, and thank you for joining us. I don’t want to talk about party politicking. I want to talk about your view as far as the cholera situation is concerned, and you are telling us that the problem is a lot worse than we think.
MBHAZIMA SHILOWA: Indeed, I’m saying that the problem is a lot worse than we were led to believe, or know, or is reported on because I think we always go by where the outbreak of cholera is, rather than looking at the fact that nationally we’ve got a lot of areas with no water, with no sanitation, where people are always getting water from the rivers, drinking the same unsafe water that we say to the people of Hammanskraal they shouldn’t do.
You don’t have to take my word for that, you can look at Parys, you can look in the Vaal, you can look in Giyani, you can go to Lusikisiki. My view is that if we’re really serious about the health of our people, about ensuring that there are no breakouts of airborne diseases or waterborne diseases, we shouldn’t just be reactive because the media glare is there in Hammanskraal, or go to Giyani because it’s there, or go to Lusikisiki or the Vaal.
We must have a national plan that we can say we’re going to execute regardless of which party is in power at local, provincial, and national level, and this is the funding that is being made available.
JEREMY MAGGS: What is baffling, Mbhazima Shilowa, is that this is a problem that has been with us for years, if not decades, yet it is largely ignored by local, provincial, and national government. Why is that do you think?
MBHAZIMA SHILOWA: Because many of them don’t really care about what they call our people. They really focus on them during the time of the elections. The point I was making is that you’ll find that if you go to Hammanskraal, the ANC speaks very loudly today – and they should about the problems there – but they forget that they too, they didn’t do anything.
You can go maybe and find some place in Mfuleni in the Western Cape, the ANC will speak more about it than the DA and vice versa. So I think it is because we speak about our people, we care about them, but in reality, we don’t care about them. We just want their votes.
JEREMY MAGGS: Part of the problem I would also suggest to you is that for a long time, for years, we’ve had a dysfunctional Department of Water and Sanitation with no work, no input, nothing being done.
MBHAZIMA SHILOWA: That’s true. In fact, and a lot of corruption that took place under that ministry during that particular period. But it also shows you how dysfunctional politics is because even though there has been change, say in administration, in Tshwane and the DA have not decided to say, okay, here is a big problem in Hammanskraal. We know we can’t solve it overnight, it may take us five years, but on year three, we want to be able to show that we really are going to be able to make a difference.
So even if we had a problem today, if we could see that over the past four, five years that they have been in government, they have made certain strides, then it is easy to understand where they come from. But no, you can’t because this very same DA that will say … corruption … to appoint the very same Saudi company that has been taking a lot of money from government and paying them in advance for work that they have not done.
JEREMY MAGGS: You say to me that we need a properly costed national plan to repair all water treatment plants and to install new ones where needed. That sounds very good, but the reality is we just don’t have the money to do that.
MBHAZIMA SHILOWA: I think that we do have the money to do a lot of things in our country. We just have our priorities wrong. Let me give you an example, take Giyani as a good example, we put R1 billion there, we did nothing about it. We put another R1 billion, we do nothing about it. I’m sure by the time that project was finished, we would’ve spent something like R6 billion. That R6 billion, we could’ve used R1 billion in Giyani, R1 billion in the Vaal, R1 billion in Parys, R1 billion in Hartbeespoort and so forth, and you can leave that and look at another situation.
The very same Tshwane that will say doesn’t have R2 billion, there are also irregularities for about R12 billion.
So no, I don’t believe that we don’t have enough money. I do accept that money doesn’t grow on trees, but if we have our priorities right, just in that department with money that we have spent over the past ten, 15 years, would’ve been able to sort out our water infrastructure.
JEREMY MAGGS: Mbhazima Shilowa, thank you very much indeed.
