Johannesburg- Elegant and deferential, the outgoing executive mayor of Midvaal, Bongani Baloyi, goes in peace when his term ends after the local government elections on November 1.
Going in peace these days for a councillor is a rare feat that is impossible to imagine in a country in which many councillors have made it their duty to run to the ground municipalities or metros they are constitutionally obliged to run efficiently.
The world may not see it, or choose to switch off because he is a DA member, a party often described as “a white party” in a country that is racially obsessed, thanks to the long apartheid years in which social separation was lauded, encouraged and legislated by a long list of National Party leaders, including Dr Hendrik Verwoerd.
Verwoerd told his followers that “blacks should never be shown the greener pastures of education, they should know their station in life is to be hewers of wood and drawers of water”. Baloyi, by his showing – seven consecutive audits since 2013 – has defied Verwoerd’s racist rants.
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In an interview with Sunday World, we asked him: In the midst of so many disgraceful failures by black councillors, your municipality has been lauded for good work, what is the secret?
Baloyi said there was no secret about it.
“You have to do your job well with professional diligence, dedicated to the service of your communities.”
Asked why he joined the DA, when there were other choices such as the ANC and during the internecine war in which many people died and the ANC was seen by the communities in Thokoza as the only credible political choice, especially for a young man or woman such as him, Baloyi said: “In my family we were raised to think for ourselves, and the idea of looking at people through popular heroism prism does not exist in my vocabulary.”
Baloyi has defied all that Verwoerd and his ilk wished for a black person, a black person whose life’s task in his mind was to be the beasts of burden.
In Baloyi’s council there was never a moment when the taps ran dry.
Contrary to Verwoerd’s wish, Baloyi assembled competent civil engineers in his municipality to ensure that clean water flows to communities’ homes every day.
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