<\/p>\n
You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here.<\/p>\n
JEREMY MAGGS: Ahead of the local government election just around the corner, Johannesburg\u2019s mayoral hopefuls are making plenty of promises, no surprises there, but what if even the best of those plans are doomed before they begin?<\/p>\n
Read\/listen:
Mashaba: \u2018I have unfinished business in Joburg\u2019
\u2018God first\u2019: The Patriotic Alliance\u2019s vision for Joburg<\/p>\n
Well-known and often outspoken businessman and former South African Post Office chief executive Mark Barnes is arguing that the city\u2019s finances are so badly broken that no incoming administration can realistically succeed without what he terms a fundamental financial restructuring.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s calling for National Treasury to help ring-fence unmanageable debt and bring in specialist expertise.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s explore that in a little more detail. Mark Barnes, welcome to you.<\/p>\n
Is the thesis of your argument then that Johannesburg is effectively financially bankrupt and it doesn\u2019t matter which mayor comes in and however competent, it\u2019s going to be very difficult to fix under current circumstances?<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s the case, we seem to be in a lot of trouble.<\/p>\n
MARK BARNES: Imagine you called up Usain Bolt and you said to him, we\u2019ve got the final for the 100m coming up, but we want you to carry this load of bricks with you, do you think you\u2019d get to break the world record like that? He won\u2019t.<\/p>\n
So what we\u2019ve got to do is start from a position of the incoming CEO \u2013 forget about whether that\u2019s the mayor or what title they might have \u2013 has to sit with the shareholder and say, excuse me, I need to know that I have a foundation from which I can make \u201cnormal\u201d operating decisions and management guidance.<\/p>\n
Absent that, I\u2019m going to spend my entire term in the bog, fighting for oxygen, never mind building a city.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m saying the numbers, if they are to be believed, first of all, we need to find the facts. Every politician has got a different number for this and R100 billion for that.<\/p>\n
I was listening to a thing this morning where Pemmy Majodina, the water minister, was saying we need R400 billion to fix water infrastructure, and by the way, we need the private sector to give us the money.<\/p>\n
ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n
Well, don\u2019t be silly, man.<\/p>\n
First of all, we won\u2019t give you the money and second of all, who worked out the numbers?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m saying get an operating budget and a functional ecosystem that you present as a player and then say to all the constituent parts that would not typically be under your remit, show me how you\u2019re going to fix it.<\/p>\n
Read: Joburg mayor defends his record, but the numbers don\u2019t lie<\/p>\n
Show me, Mr Police, how are you going to fix crime? I\u2019m not going to do that; I\u2019m managing a city. Show me, Mr National Treasury, how you are going to work out a long-term capital plan with me?<\/p>\n
Because, if I have to pay you interest on the loans that I owe you every month, I can\u2019t run a business.<\/p>\n
Show me the water utility, how are you going to give me a functional city so I can focus on the industries that need water to exist? And that\u2019s what I\u2019m saying.<\/p>\n
JEREMY MAGGS: Mark, that all depends, I guess, on exemplary leadership and whoever that mayor or chief executive is, is going to have to have a lot of juicy carrots and a couple of really big sticks in order to corral people into moving in the same direction. I\u2019d suggest to you that within the current political environment, that\u2019s almost impossible.<\/p>\n
MARK BARNES: Well, it is almost impossible by design. Because what happens is the executive to run Johannesburg or any other major metro or any municipality for that matter, is elected by the popular vote.<\/p>\n
The popular vote produces the lowest common denominator outcome of wants, not expertise.<\/p>\n
So the challenge is for those elected by the democratic vote to then appoint experts to run the city instead of running it themselves.<\/p>\n
Cadre deployment, I\u2019m sorry, is pervasive in every political party I\u2019ve been exposed to.<\/p>\n
So you can\u2019t say I\u2019m the popular mayor and therefore I know how to fix corruption. No. Or therefore I can manage this budget. You can\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Get someone who can and have a fairly solid ground from which to think rationally in planning the steps that you\u2019re going to take forward.<\/p>\n
ADVERTISEMENT:<\/p>\n
CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n
Read: It\u2019s time to get the political hacks out of Joburg city management<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the fundamental disconnect, is we\u2019ve got allegiances and popularity. You can\u2019t, Jeremy, become a dentist by the popular vote. You can\u2019t say, listen, we voted our mate John, he\u2019s going to be the dentist.<\/p>\n
Well, no one\u2019s going to go to him when they\u2019ve got a real tooth problem, and that\u2019s what we\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n
We need dentists, not friends, and those friends need to appoint pools of parallel expertise, which are beyond their remit and capacity to simultaneously build the guardrails within which their focused strategy of creating an economically viable city which can support growth and therefore start addressing really inequality and poverty and those things.<\/p>\n
Whilst we do that, will you make sure our backs are covered with water and the cost of electricity and collecting debt.<\/p>\n
JEREMY MAGGS: Mark, your argument, as you\u2019ve just said, calls for specialist teams to tackle failing services. But who appoints these experts? Would they want the jobs necessarily?<\/p>\n
And perhaps most importantly, how do you keep political interference out of that process? Because we have a track record of that happening in the past.<\/p>\n
MARK BARNES: By submitting to a higher cause than your popular outcome. The higher cause in the case of Johannesburg, is way beyond Johannesburg, it\u2019s SA Inc we\u2019re talking about you.<\/p>\n
If Joburg fails, South Africa fails, Gauteng fails.<\/p>\n
All of these things are related and embedded in one another\u2019s misery.<\/p>\n
You need a leader who uses power to effect change, not to perpetuate leadership.<\/p>\n
Around the world, we\u2019re seeing perpetual leaders, leaders who entrench themselves by hook or by crook \u2013 and I say that with some enthusiasm \u2013 to make sure that they are still in charge, because the being in charge is what they want.<\/p>\n
I spend my time listening to political parties talking about each other more than they talk about Johannesburg.<\/p>\n
They say, well, the ANC (African National Congress) this or well, the DA (Democratic Alliance) that or the EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters) that.<\/p>\n
ADVERTISEMENT:<\/p>\n
CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n
Well, I don\u2019t care what they think about each other, I care about what they\u2019re going to do and who they\u2019re going to do it with because they\u2019re going to need private sector capital.<\/p>\n
Read\/listen: Joburg\u2019s collapse is becoming a national crisis<\/p>\n
More importantly, they\u2019re going to need foreign direct investment. We don\u2019t have the economics at a 1.2% GDP (gross domestic product) growth, inflation at over 4%, we do not have the economics to be the foundation of net economic growth.<\/p>\n
JEREMY MAGGS: Mark, if I read your analysis in your Daily Maverick piece correctly, you\u2019re also proposing that the historic debt burden be ring-fenced. What exactly happens to that debt then and who ultimately pays for it?<\/p>\n
MARK BARNES: So if you say, I\u2019m going to hold the debt over here in a box, me, National Treasury, and you tell me what you\u2019re going to do to make money every year.<\/p>\n
As you make money every year, I\u2019ve got to deal with you, which says, here\u2019s the long-term capital repayment plan that arises out of your functional economy that you have now put together a plan for in normal circumstances, this is how we\u2019re going to operate.<\/p>\n
Read\/listen:<\/p>\n
Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng\u2019s EFF prescription for Joburg
\nZille: \u2018I\u2019m committed to Joburg and getting it on the right track\u2019<\/p>\n
You can assume you\u2019ve got a full tank of petrol, go and drive as fast as you can.<\/p>\n
You can assume you\u2019ve got a competent ABS (anti-lock braking system) brakes functional racing car, get in the car and drive, and if you win the race \u2013 my analogy is getting a bit lost here \u2013 but what I\u2019m saying is take that away from the evaluation of the plan.<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t sit with a plan that says, we\u2019re going to fix corruption, we\u2019re going to fix the finance, we\u2019re going to fix electricity, we\u2019re going to fix water, we\u2019re going to fix debt, we\u2019re going to fix waste. No.<\/p>\n
Say, if those were working, how would I work?<\/p>\n
Then separately and in parallel, you go and create teams and leaders, probably nationally or at least provincially, who can fill the tank, fix the brakes and do all of those things so that are you, the best drive, can run the fastest car.<\/p>\n
JEREMY MAGGS: Mark Barnes, thank you very much indeed.<\/p>\n
#Joburgs #broken #finances #doom #mayor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here. JEREMY MAGGS: Ahead of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[7072,22478,168,9562,9797],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19161"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}