This week saw the launch of the National Good Governance Week (NGGW) under the theme `Good Governance and Poverty Eradication: Two sides of the same coin’.
The conference features an inter-faith Good Governance prayer which will no doubt entreat the Lord to help administrators manage State organisations in an accountable and responsive manner.
The initiative is organised by the Public Protector, Adv Thuli Madonsela, and is aimed at raising public awareness of good governance in the country.
There is unfortunately more than enough pent-up and angry public awareness of poor governance and official corruption in the land.
The principle of the feel-good meeting is to emphasise the heartfelt intentions of government to provide basic services to its citizens and to regret, in suitably muffled tones, that citizen dissatisfaction at failure to do so, is understandable.
‘South Africans must not be afraid to hold government to account if they are not receiving basic services’ says Madonsela.
Preferably not, obviously, in the despicable manner it’s happening now countrywide with riots, vandalism and the looting and destruction of State and private property.
Credit rating
The image reflected by the manner of South African service delivery protest is bad for foreign investment and the workers’ penchant for violent strikes degrades our international credit ratings.
Indeed if these ratings were to fall another point, South Africa Incorporated would be considered a junk bond.
Respected rating agencies and international polls depend on reliable vital statistics obtained from Ministries of Foreign Affairs based in turn on the thoughtful analyses of the seasoned diplomats stationed at their embassies and consulates in South Africa.
These `station reports’ as they’re known, play a pivotal role in profiling South Africa’s image in the Cabinet chambers of the developed world.
They also guide, certainly in the case of the European Union nations and North America to determine the extent of possible foreign development aid from the richer nations to South Africa.
The station reports show a systematic and alarming decline in South African state education systems, labour relations legislation and management, public housing, health, the criminal justice system, municipal management of sanitation and pollution, and the general poor maintenance of the roads system.
The international SA image is not brightened by the police killing of striking mineworkers, babies raped and thrown into pit toilets, and the rising criminality index.
The professionals manning the rating agencies however are singularly unimpressed when their well-researched findings are airily dismissed by prominent South Africans as `racist’.
The whole NGGW effort comes perilously close to a sow’s ear and golden purse exercise with elections around the corner and a disarmingly charming Thuli Madonsela the best strategically placed spokesperson for real government accountability.
The troubled folk on the ground fully understand what honesty and accountability mean.
That’s why they’re burning tyres and hurling rocks.
