Tadashi Sabalele has penned an open letter to current Midvaal mayor, Cllr Bongani Baloyi, following rumours that he will be leaving office and the public sector for the private sector.
In the world of politics, a transparent and accountable leader is a very rare and valuable gem.
A leader who reliably guarantees and timeously delivers quality basic services to their community.
A leader who has the best interests of their community at heart and successfully manifests it through action.
The municipality of the Midvaal in Gauteng has found such a jewel in executive mayor Bongani Baloyi of the Democratic Alliance.
Your stewardship since you first took office in 2013, making you the youngest mayor in South Africa, has known nothing short of success in the form of steady sustainable development, which has been the result of Midvaal's institutionalisation of best practices - including the monitoring of action plans and the implementation of consequence management to ensure that internal control deficiencies and risks of fraud are addressed effectively.
Various reputable institutions responsible for measuring good governance reaffirmed Midvaal's position as the best-performing and most sustainable municipality in Gauteng.
Accountability and transparency
As Midvaal mayor, you have attributed your successes of governance to the work of competent, capable staff who are meeting as well as exceeding expectations and ethical leadership at all levels of the Midvaal municipality.
The central message of the Auditor-General's latest report identifies that the accountability and transparency of financials and performance management continue to deteriorate in local government.
Only 18 municipalities managed to produce quality financial statements performance reports. Midvaal was the only municipality in Gauteng, said by the Auditor-General, to be consistently performing well and obtaining clean audits.
Financial mismanagement has plagued the modus operandi of municipalities countrywide.
Public sector governance is brimming with partisan politicians who are no longer conscious of the fact that they are, in fact, public servants; employed to strive at fulfilling the basic needs of members of the communities they lead.
Most are instead invested in the pursuit of self-enrichment, consequently at the expense of poor South Africans. This is done through significant non-compliance with key laws and regulations relating to financial and performance management and an inability to meet their legislated obligations to submit their financials to auditing authorities as a means to avoid accountability.
This has proved not to be the reality for the community that you currently serve, Mayor Baloyi.
You are a grounded, loyal and tremendously hard-working local government official committed to the realisation of economic freedom and the eradication of poverty as we know it.
Partisan political moves are lesser than your style of leadership. Service delivery, groundwork and activism are much more important and take precedence for you above all else, which helps us understand why you are currently not among those gunning for the top positions within the DA.
Nevertheless, you epitomise the brand of leadership the Democratic Alliance would need at the helm to steer themselves to an electoral victory over the current governing party.
Unfortunately, and despite an impressive trajectory, it is rumoured that you are parting ways with public sector governance and you have intentions to veer into the private sector. This is devastating news to the ears.
Robust and dynamic state capacity are instrumental in building the economies of developing countries like our own, and building that sort of state capacity requires the calibre of leadership consisting only that which emulates yours as it would revolutionise public sector governance in taking the country to greater heights.
Harbouring a giant
The DA is harbouring a giant in you and to witness your exit, more especially into the private sector, would be a great disappointment, to say the least.
I do not picture Mayor Baloyi fulfilling the immense potential he has to change lives if he moves onto providing leadership in the private sector.
A leader of such stature is much needed in the ranks of state-owned enterprises, which are in complete dire straits, provincial government and even national government. Those spheres of the public sector would greatly benefit from your skill-set and working knowledge of the public services sector.
Baloyi is above and beyond that type of politic and his brand of leadership would rather seek to prioritise civil society above any party politics by directly combating the inefficiencies of the public services system, ensuring services are delivered and that jobs are protected and created.
You are needed in the public services sector, yours is a leadership that is imperative and the exact kind of human capital that will strengthen state capacity, allowing the government to dispense its duties satisfactorily and boost the economy to the benefit of all citizens.
- Tadashi Sabalele is a former SRC President at North West University and BEC member of the ANC at Setshedi Nhlapo Branch.