Compelling every elected representative, senior government official and SOE leader to use public services such as hospitals, transport and state schools may be one of the few ways to ensure they improve their quality.
Elected leaders should no longer receive free power, water and SAA transport. They should not get free housing, free security and car subsidies. VIP security assigned to elected officials at taxpayers’ expense should be immediately removed so they can experience South Africa’s terrifying crime wave like ordinary citizens.
Parliamentary villages where many MPs live, subsidised by taxpayers, should be abolished. Elected leaders should be compelled to queue like ordinary citizens for services from home affairs, traffic departments and the revenue service.
Given the economic crisis and the failure of government, members of the cabinet, national and provincial legislatures and municipal councillors, senior civil servants and SOE managers should have their salaries and benefits cut by at least a quarter.
One reason for the lack of accountability from elected representatives and government officials is that they are cushioned from the pain of high food prices, broken infrastructure and public services, and the everyday violence ordinary citizens experience.
Because they don’t directly feel the impact of power outages and failing schools and hospitals, they lack the sense of urgency to do so something about it.
Many ANC leaders would be less ideological about insisting the state should exclusively deliver all public services if they experienced the terrible “services” themselves.
Unless elected and government officials feel the hardships of ordinary citizens, it is not likely they will improve the performance of the state or become more honest and accountable — unless voters do not vote for them and they lose their positions.
It is not surprising that in the post-World War 2 “developmental states” or the Asian “tigers”, which the ANC government wants to emulate, governing parties and leaders insisted that elected and government officials live as humbly as ordinary citizens.
Immediately after independence, Singapore’s leader Lee Kuan Yew compelled fellow leaders and government officials to live among the people, drive humble cars and use public services.
Ordinary citizens must stop admiring the taxpayer-funded bling lifestyles of those who promise much and blame bogeymen for their failures
It is not surprising that Singapore transformed from dirt-poor at independence from Great Britain in 1965 to a highly developed economy with GDP per capita in 2015 of $56,000 (R945,000) — similar to Germany's.
In the successful post-war Western democratic welfare states, whether social democratic, Christian or conservative, leaders often used public transport or cycled or walked to work.
Uruguay’s José Mujica, elected president in 2009 and dubbed the most humble leader in the world, continued to live in his rundown farmhouse, drive his battered VW Beetle and dressed humbly.
Again, it is not surprising that Uruguay under his leadership became one of the most economically successful, competent and safe developing countries in the world.
It is significant that in the most successful African countries after independence elected leaders did not live on subsidised housing, transport and security. Botswana’s post-independence leader Seretse Khama famously stood in shop queues like everyone else.
Voters will have to express stronger outrage at elected ANC representatives and government officials for failing to deliver public services. Ordinary citizens must stop admiring the taxpayer-funded bling lifestyles of those who promise much and blame bogeymen for their failures.
Citizens should also stop blaming conspiracies, foreigners or the past for the failures, corruption and waste of this government. Hold elected representatives and government officials accountable.
Most importantly, citizens should stop voting for the ANC or other party leaders based on blackness, ethnic solidarity and struggle credentials. Instead they should focus on competence, honesty and compassion.
• Gumede is associate professor, School of Government, University of the Witwatersrand and author of Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times (Tafelberg)
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