“I want them (Alexandra residents, neighbours to Sandton) to feel like they’re also part of the city.”
(Herman Mashaba, newly elected Mayor of Johannesburg)
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A Note on eKerk and Fellow South Africans: The views expressed in this blog series are entirely my own. I know that eKerk’s audience is primarily South African Christians who speak Afrikaans. As an “honorary South African” (married into the family!), I am expressing my personal conviction about the recent South African municipal elections, aware that my views do not express the opinion of all South Africans, let alone South African Christians. However, my great hope is that you would consider my words with a spirit of searching reflection, regardless of ‘where you land,’ and that as a result, we would love our neighbours all the more deeply as a result.
Hopeful for the continued restoration of all things throughout South Africa, for the good of all,
Chris Kamalski
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Winning an election, especially as the political party promising lofty change, is one thing. Putting your
money where your mouth was is another. While the Democratic Alliance celebrated widespread wins in major urban centres across South Africa in August’s 2016 Municipal Elections, creating a referendum on the African National Congress’s leadership and governance in the 22 years since Nelson Mandela first ascended to power, many South Africans looked upon the change with understandable skepticism, wondering if high-minded rhetoric would translate to actual transformation at the local level.
Slowly, the stories have been filtering in. Reports of election celebrations punctuated by rubbish cleanup instead of lavish parties. The elimination of all “blue light brigades” in Tshwane (government vehicles that are given police escorts through traffic, regardless of ‘need’), even potentially for South African President Jacob Zuma, because “the only VIPS will be the people of this city,” according to newly elected Tshwane Mayor Solly Msimanga. This comes on the heels of the news that lavish parties for political elites will be curtailed, as “we must serve the people, not party with public funds” (Solly Msimanga again). A few days ago, the news that the tender process for awarding government contracts will now be made more transparent to the public, no longer held behind the cloak-and-dagger of closed door negotiations.
And then, yesterday, the wonderfully delightful story that Herman Mashaba, the newly elected Mayor of Johannesburg and a fellow resident of Sandton, had diverted R70 million in government funds allocated for construction of further bicycle lanes in Sandton, towards provision of badly-needed basic services in the neighbouring township of Alexandra:
“I live in Sandton and at the same time I have neighbours of mine that I need to take care of as a matter of urgency. People in Alexandra are living across the highway...people with no toilets...no water and dignity and I have to make a decision. I see R70 million is budgeted to build bicycle lanes for people in Sandton and now, I look at people of Alexandra. Some of them have taken their cases to the Human Rights Commission. I cannot live in a city that deprives people of such basic services...I am taking that R70m to give my neighbours, my people, the opportunity to have dignity. I want them (Alexandra residents) to feel like they’re also part of the city.” (Herman Mashaba, Mayor of Johannesburg, interviewed on “The John Robbie Show” on 702 Talk Radio, September 15th, 2016).
I write this on a Christian blogging platform not to universally praise the DA for selecting smart mayors as their newly elected political leaders, although the above examples do demonstrate a shrewd political intelligence, but rather to suggest that Christ-followers could learn something from their recent example (which, for the good of all South Africans, hopefully becomes a way of governing, not scattered good that evaporates as power becomes entitlement for the DA), namely this:
Change starts at the micro level, and often within our own hearts first.
A well-trodden saying in popular culture the past few years, falsely attributed to Gandhi, exhorts us to “Be the change we want to see in the world.” And while I love the sentiment, it belies the reality:
transformation, particularly transformation that is sustainable and lasting, is difficult, slow, undertaken
with resistance, and often unpopular. If this is depressingly true, then how do I actually become someone different, hopefully more and more like Jesus himself?
Slowly. In small ways. One action at a time that elevates one’s neighbour over one’s self.
I love bicycle lanes, and am an advocate for alternative means of transportation. But I would rather see my neighbour’s needs taken care of before my own comfort is addressed. This principle – this other centeredness – may it infect our actions, conduct, and behaviour towards our neighbour. To the degree that it does, lasting change will come for the good of all.
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