LETTERS | Give women in politics real power

Count the women. Of the 42 names the ANC put forward as possible mayoral candidates for the country’s eight metros, a good half are women, and that is worth saying out loud.

So let us settle the question that surfaces every election season. Should more women run our cities? Yes. Women are the majority of the people standing in the queue at the pay point, walking to the clinic, carrying water when the reservoir fails. A city governed without them at the table is a city governed on guesswork.

But watch the reason we give. The maternal argument that women budget on nothing and stretch a pension across a household of eight sounds like praise and works like a cage. It says a woman belongs in office because she is good at coping with scarcity, which is exactly the skill a failing municipality wants to extract from her while changing nothing. Nurture is not a governance model. Competence is.

There is a harder pattern underneath all of this, and it deserves a name. Women in our municipalities are routinely handed the chair once the building is already on fire. Princess Faku took Buffalo City in March 2023 after the ANC recalled Xola Pakati amid concerns about audit outcomes, expenditure and revenue collection. Babalwa Lobishe took Nelson Mandela Bay in 2024, a metro that has changed hands and coalitions more often than most residents can count. Neither woman built the debt, the failed pump stations or the hollowed-out technical departments they inherited. Both are now measured against them.

When men preside over collapse, we talk about difficult conditions and factional pressure. When women do it, we talk about disappointment, as though the city were a household she failed to keep tidy. Accountability must apply to everyone, and a mayor who does not appear before her council’s public accounts committee should be pressed on it, whoever she is. What cannot stand is a standard that rises the moment the mayor is a woman.

So on November 4, vote for the woman who knows the audit opinion, the debtors book and the pump station that has been broken since 2023. Then hold her party to the part it keeps skipping: give her the authority to appoint on merit, a funded budget and a full term without a recall hanging over her head.

— Pikolomzi Qaba, by e-mail

Open up the Safa presidency

Like millions of South Africans, I have watched our football for years and asked the same question repeatedly: how can a country with this much talent, this much passion and this much history continue to underperform?

We have the players. We have the supporters. We have the commercial potential. We have former footballers, coaches, administrators, broadcasters and businesspeople with experience and insight. What we seem to struggle with is leadership.

The president of the South African Football Association (Safa) influences the development of football from grassroots level through to our national teams. Yet ordinary South Africans have very little meaningful influence over who occupies that position. The decision is largely made within football’s own structures. Can we develop a better mechanism for identifying, testing and electing the people who lead South African football?

I believe we can. We should consider a system in which candidates for the presidency of Safa face much greater public and institutional scrutiny. What is their plan for football development? What is their record of leadership? What do they understand about governance, finance and commercial development? How will they rebuild schools football? How will they strengthen women’s football? What is their plan for coaching development, refereeing, academies and national teams? What are their measurable commitments for the term they are asking to serve?

These questions should not be answered behind closed doors. Candidates seeking to lead South African football should be required to present their vision publicly and defend it.

There are many South Africans outside the traditional football administration structures who could potentially contribute enormously to the game. Our governance model should not make it almost impossible for them to do so.

— Thulani Sydney Jnr, Mashele

Protect pensioners from the PIC

There are voices suggesting that the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) could continue as an investment agent for the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) if certain negotiated conditions are met swiftly. Among these proposals is the appointment of an independent chair, ostensibly to remove politics from the PIC.

But how realistic is this? Can a state-owned corporation, by definition tied to politicians, ever truly become apolitical? Expecting politicians to relinquish control of what they see as a piggy bank is naïve.

The PIC is inherently rotten.

The deeper problem is the absence of accountability. Lies told to parliament have carried no consequences. The Mpati commission recommended that certain cases be referred to the prosecuting authority, yet what has come of that? How much of the pension fund’s money has been recovered? Billions have been lost, and still the guilty walk free. Pensioners are the ones who pay the price.

Recently, it was reported that the GEPF’s banking affairs were shifted from one bank to another, involving transactions worth billions. This was apparently done through a tender process. That raises the question: should the management of the GEPF itself not also be subjected to a tender process? Naturally, politicians will resist —politicians who should have no say over money that does not belong to them.

If the PIC cannot be dismantled through a tender process, then only one solution remains: the courts must interdict the board of trustees from granting the PIC any investment mandate.

— Adamus P Stemmet, Ridgeworth

Start voter education in schools

I am astonished at the responses given by the IEC chair (Q&A with IEC chair Mosotho Moepya on unregistered voters, August 23) regarding those who prefer to exercise their “constitutional right” not to vote.

Given the fact that we live in a representative democracy where one of the few rights a citizen has in the political arena is a right to vote, the comments made by Moepya appear to be blasé, casual and uninformed.

He highlights the feedback received from eligible voters who don’t want to vote, citing their disassociation and displeasure towards political parties in particular.

Unfortunately, he fails to grasp that the nature of politics is essentially about much more than that. As citizens, is there not a need for us to understand how our society functions and the processes that govern our relationship to those who assume leadership positions?

Education and schooling should play a vital and continuing role in ensuring that every potential voter, from a very early age, not only grasps the history of our hard-won vote but also understands the role and responsibilities of each one of us.

A school curriculum from primary school through to high school needs to be formulated and implemented. It should focus on the understanding that society is a living organism and that without the full participation and nurturing by all, it would not be able to function for the benefit of all. It should include practical elements where students would be exposed to electoral processes in a school setting.

— Dr John Harold Crowe, Fish Hoek