CHAR GPT: Go out and vote to fix what’s crumbling, bumbling, toiling, troubling

My father voted for the first time in 1994. He was 71 years old, a highly educated, literate man who loved my mother, a hot mutton curry, Romantic poets Robert Burns and William Blake, cricket, and me. Mostly, but not always, in that order.

He was hugely respected in the Indian community in Ladysmith, northern KwaZulu-Natal, where he was headmaster of our very large high school. He was a moral absolutist – a diehard advocate of fairness and a champion of justice and equity.

Which was why he found the undeniably unequal system of apartheid, of separate development, so abhorrent. His vote was a sacred commitment to voicing his disapproval of what had been and of making his voice heard in deciding what could be.

On the day my lovely dad died, in October at the end of 1994, he woke early, as was his habit, and breakfasted on his customary marmalade-topped toast and a pot of tea while reading The Natal Mercury and finishing the paper’s cryptic crossword.

Then, dressed in the white crimplene safari suit that was his summer uniform, he drove his old Mercedes-Benz to the municipal offices, where he stood in line to pay his utility bill. Then, like now, this bill covered water, electricity, garbage removal and rates.

Dad was happy to pay it. In all his years he’d never been cut off from the grid, and only during the terrible floods, when the Klip River burst its banks, did the taps run dry, forcing residents in the low-lying areas to get their supply from tankers.

Pavements in the neighbourhood were cleared of weeds, lawns in the parks were regularly mowed, street lights and robots worked. He paid his utility bill without resentment.

Voting, Dad said, was his proudest moment: being recognised as a human able to use his democratic right to shape the future of a country he was leaving to us: me and my brothers and sister. He died content in the belief that now that the apartheid oppressors had been toppled, our future was safe. It wasn’t. It isn’t.

Something stirring

We go to the polls in days. Never before has the outcome of municipal elections been more important. It hinges on our hope that town and city managers can help reset things, that new foundations will be laid.

We can feel it in the air, this sense of anticipation. Whether you’re in Meadowlands or Melville, we’re holding our communal breath as we wait for things to change: for our lights to stay on, our taps to run with clean potable water, our trash to be collected, our potholes to be fixed, for getting a driver’s licence/passport/licence disc/unabridged birth certificate without having to expend Herculean effort.

We want to feel safe in our neighbourhoods knowing that we have an effective police force. I want to go for a walk without the ever-present fear of an attack or of being robbed of my expensive trainers (which seems to be a new thing).

There’s something else in the air. Something new. A sense of defiance. French students have been protesting over crumbling schools, teacher shortages, soaring fuel costs and a cost-of-living crisis. South Africans too are examining their own crumbling structures along with prohibitive fuel and food costs.

Have we finally had enough? Is this election a harbinger of our own bloodless Arab Spring? Are we united in this? Are we saying “Stop! No more!” to corruption, the mismanagement of our hard-earned taxes, the theft by the greedy few who are feeding from our communal trough while those in need go without?

It’s made me cogitate long and hard over two heavily laden words: resilience and acquiescence. Which do we display, I wonder?

Resilience is the active capacity to bounce back, adapt and grow after facing adversity. It’s a positive quality, one that shows emotional strength and grit under pressure. It’s celebrated as a core virtue.

Acquiescence is the passive acceptance of a situation or authority without protest or resistance, often yielding because opposition feels useless. Whereas resilience drives recovery and agency, acquiescence resigns to circumstance. This passivity, often seen as a weakness, can lead to exploitation, loss of agency and a failure to stand up against injustice.

Daily struggles

Curiously, I think South Africans are an uncomfortable combination of both. We’ve had to be resilient in the face of the daily challenges we face. The resilient rich have responded to the frustrating and consistent intermittent electricity supply by installing – at huge cost – solar systems.

What about life-sustaining water? Here’s the crime: Johannesburg Water admits that it loses nearly 46% of its clean water before it ever reaches a tap – mostly because of thousands of undetected leaks and bursting, aged asbestos pipes. Blame it on decades of underinvestment and an ageing network. A large portion of pipes are more than 50 years old.

With that level of lack of care, it came as no surprise that for three long weeks, Tshwane didn’t chlorinate water drawn from a river polluted with sewage – or warn residents of the contamination. More than 400 people, mostly children younger than four, fell ill in Bronkhorstspruit, all diagnosed with acute gastrointestinal illnesses.

Again, the resilient rich have installed water tanks to see them through the dry patches. And, there is swimming pool water to keep toilets flushed should those run out. The acquiescent poor stand in long queues waiting their turn to fill a bucket with tanker water – which then has to be carried home. I pity the old and infirm.

Gauteng, South Africa’s economic hub, is buckling under a multi-utility crisis driven by decades of underinvestment, political instability and administrative collapse. And we the people are having to live through it all.

Choosing decline vs action

Have you noticed the alarming increase in urban filth and illegal dumping? Partly to blame is the collapse of municipal garbage trucks. The City of Johannesburg reports that a shortage of rubbish pick-up vehicles has seen refuse go uncollected in suburban areas. Worse, the inner-city streets are turning into dumping grounds.

How does poor urban planning affect us, the people? Gauteng is rapidly running out of legal landfill space and manages existing sites so badly that there are ­frequent landfill fires that blanket nearby residential areas in toxic smoke.

Then there are the blocked stormwater drains, thousands of potholes, vandalised traffic lights at key intersections across Africa’s supposed economic hub, unpaid municipal phone bills so residents can’t even report problems, ambulance shortages and a fire department with no working fire engines.

How have we survived? Resilience, yes. We find ways to work around the system. But we’re acquiescent too. We’ve got to the point where we shrug at power and water outages.

We put up with people ignoring traffic rules – and I don’t just mean the taxis, but also the drivers who jump red robots. We ignore city noise ordinances. We pay bribes to traffic cops, passport-issuing officials, driver’s licence examiners.

Amid this, what can be done and who can do it? You can, in fact. And you can do it by voting. So, for those who say you will not vote, shame on you. Your democratic right to ensure that you choose the people to fix our broken city was hard won.

So, you can make my father’s fervent hope come true: that we voted in a better world. It doesn’t matter who you vote for. Just choose your candidates wisely, and vote. For all of our sakes. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R39. The e-edition of Daily Maverick’s weekly newspaper, DM168, is now free for readers who are signed into their Daily Maverick account. Click here to access the latest e-edition.