Maimane shows naive ignorance

MMUSI Maimane is quoted on the Heraldlive website as making two claims in a speech at Wells Estate:

The ANC has destroyed the Nelson Mandela Bay economy, “sabotaged by a corrupt and incompetent local government”;

The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality had R547-million in “unauthorised, fruitless and wasteful expenditure” in 2014-15 and this was the proof of the corruption he claimed existed. Both claims are astonishingly naïve.

Between 1980 and 1990 the population of Port Elizabeth (I do not have the full metro’s figures) rose as follows (all figures 000s):

The near doubling of the entire population, in 10 short years, was underpinned by an explosion in the black African population, as influx control and the homelands collapsed, and in-immigration reached historic levels. This was accompanied by the loss of possibly 10 000 jobs in the footwear industry, as Port Elizabeth dropped from producing 24% to 9% of the nation’s footwear between 1953 and 1987, and the direct loss of 5 000 jobs when the Ford Motor Company closed its assembly line in Port Elizabeth and franchised its manufacture to Pretoria-based Samcor.

Employment per sector in Port Elizabeth changed as follows:

Thus total job numbers shrank, while our population nearly doubled. In 1980 in Port Elizabeth there was one formal job for every third person and by 1990 it was one for every sixth Port Elizabethan.

This was the biggest surge in unemployment and poverty we have ever experienced, and plainly pre-dates ANC government – in fact, it was the death rattle of apartheid.

Further, there is a difference (unacknowledged by Mmusi) between:

Irregular and unauthorised expenditure (where the full accounting paper trail was not available for audit, but money was not necessarily wasted and certainly not stolen), and

Fruitless and wasteful expenditure, when money has been wasted. This is the more concerning category.

For the record, Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality reported R28-million in fruitless and wasteful expenditure in 2014-15, of which R26-million (93%) was interest on a VAT short payment that followed a SARS audit.

One feels guilty of contradicting Mmusi, who is a charming man. But he fills boots previously filled by the likes of Frederick van Zyl Slabbert, Colin Eglin and Helen Zille. They did not make such naïve mistakes – they knew their stuff, or didn’t talk on the matter if they didn’t.

ANC mayoral committee member Rory Riordan, Port Elizabeth