SOUTH AFRICA: iGoli 2002 — is the future private?
JOHANNESBURG — By December 1998, this city's glitter was tarnished by capital flight and a decade of bad management. South Africa's city of gold (iGoli) was deep in the red. While suburban services declined, the black townships waited and waited for the fruits that freedom had promised. Thus the initial clamour that greeted the advent of the Johannesburg rejuvenation plan iGoli 2002.
In that month, former transport department director general, Ketso Gordhan, was appointed the Johannesburg council's CEO, African National Congress (ANC) member Kenny Fihla was appointed chairperson of the council's transformation committee, while Roland Hunter became the CEO of the finance department. Two years down the line, while the city's rejuvenation and financial budgeting plan is continuing apace, its reputation has been scarred by a protracted dispute with the 35,000 municipal employees, for whom iGoli 2002 is a pejorative.
Gordhan, who was faced with a 400 million rand overdraft when he took office, imposed a belt-tightening budget in which all capital expenditure was frozen. He adopted a World Bank model which pins its hopes on the private sector.
iGoli 2002 turns on a fulcrum of ring-fencing the council's various businesses into autonomous units run by private sector executives on business lines. It is "corporatisation". It does not encourage "political interference" and tries to keep elected councillors' participation in the running of services to a minimum of 20% of the boards of the 10 companies that will eventually run Johannesburg.
On the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) web site, the city's biggest trade union has an entire section opposed to iGoli 2002. It symbolises the deep anger that workers feel for the program.
Fronting the worker and community protests is Trevor Ngwane, a former ANC councillor suspended by his party for writing a column in the Sunday World newspaper lambasting the city's plan. Ngwane, along with a coterie of left-wing academics from the University of Witwatersrand, provide the intellectual muscle behind workers' protests. Together with SAMWU, they have assembled material to show that plans like iGoli 2002 around the world, which adopt "alternative service delivery mechanisms" like public-private partnerships, result in higher costs and declining service standards.
SAMWU opposes any form of privatisation. Backed with research from Bolivia, Argentina and Canada, Ngwane believes prices of basic services like water and electricity will rise. In meetings in his Pimville constituency in Soweto, he is telling a dirt-poor community that increases in electricity and water tariffs are the fault of iGoli 2002. "Our plan is to build a struggle on the ground using mass action, education, raising public awareness about and against iGoli 2002", said the Johannesburg council's dread-locked bete noir.
The forum wants a return to the vision of participatory local government which the progressive ANC-led movement crafted with its allied South African National Civics Organisation in the 1980s.
SAMWU and civic associations believe there should be a lifeline supply of water and electricity to indigent users and a progressive tariff structure so that those who use more, the rich, subsidise the poor.
SAMWU president Petrus Mashishi concurs: "Running local government on business principles will only benefit the rich, and the poor will suffer. Business principles imply that profit must be made from services — this means those who have no money will be neglected."
Mashishi's statements signify the huge gulf that has grown between iGoli 2002's ANC managers and its workers, the vast majority of whom voted for the ANC in 1994 and 1999.
In early July, workers protesting against iGoli 2002 overturned bins and blocked roads in downtown Johannesburg with graders. Traffic ground to a halt and police broke up the protest. The next day, the council's labour relations specialist, Makgane Thobejane — a former trade union lawyer — sought an injunction against further "wildcat" action by SAMWU and the Independent Municipal Association of Trade Unions (IMATU), which had joined the protest. SAMWU has 25,000 members employed by the council and IMATU has 10,000.
The council successfully blocked further action by the union. In the same week, an agreement was signed to end the dispute SAMWU had declared earlier this year on iGoli 2002. They agreed to negotiate restructuring within 30 days of the signing of the agreement. However, within days, the council had breached the deal by continuing preparations for privatisation.
SAMWU wants more pro-poor policies and stakes its identity on the "public delivery of public services". Anything else is "exploitative" and will replicate apartheid municipalities, it believes. SAMWU spokesperson Anna Weekes said that a trade union alternative to iGoli 2002, submitted as an emergency plan in December 1998, was ignored.
In line with iGoli 2002's division of the council into 10 operating companies, workers are being transferred to the new companies. They have secured a three-year moratorium on job losses and a guarantee that working conditions won't worsen, but, "What happens at the end of the moratorium? They currently have an open-ended contract. Why change it now?", Weekes asked.
The parties have set the end of July as the final deadline for negotiations. If the bargaining chamber cannot reach agreement, "The parties may exercise any rights they may have". For SAMWU, this means going on strike. For the Johannesburg council, it is to continue to implement the plan.
BY FARAH KHAN
[Abridged from Inter-Press Service.]