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Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu was a busy person last week, if her official diary is anything to go by.
On Wednesday, she was scheduled to launch a housing project and hand over title deeds in Johannesburg. From there, she was going to scoot off to East London to do another housing handover. With the cold front bringing misery to the people of South Africa, she was to kick off her Thursday by distributing blankets to elderly women in East London and then participate in a clean-up campaign.
On Friday she was off to Port Elizabeth for the handover of a social housing project.
Seeing she was already in the city, it made sense that she stayed over for the weekend for yet more rapid service-delivery initiatives.
And so on Saturday she was to take part in the “celebration of housing delivery and launch of an electrification programme”. This would then be followed on Monday by a walkabout and the handover of a house to an elderly woman.
But before you decide to hoist her on your shoulders and lobby the ANC’s Premier League to put her on top of the list for the December 2017 party conference, you should hold on a bit.
She is not the only busy government office bearer.
All over the country, ministers, deputy ministers, premiers and MECs have been running around doing Mother Teresa-esque deeds that should be part of their daily jobs anyway.
Roads have been upgraded, school pupils have been blessed with new technology, the indigent have been given relief and grand infrastructure plans have been announced.
Election time is the time when Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini also becomes useful for a change.
Dlamini runs around dishing out goodies to communities and constantly reminding those who are on the receiving end that it is not just the government that is assisting them, but the “ANC-led government”. Even civil servants are marshalled into blurring the line between politics and public service to chant the mantra about the ANC government delivering to the masses.
This is by no means a uniquely South African phenomenon. In the US, they have even coined a name for it: pork-barrel politics.
There are different explanations as to why the noble animals called pigs unfairly came to be associated with the selfish and greedy abuse of public resources for the benefit of politicians or their parties.
But in essence, what happens is that those wishing to be re-elected hurriedly pump money into projects that will serve the purpose of getting themselves re-elected.
The projects often also benefit the business friends of politicians or their parties, who in turn plough money back into political principals’ campaigns.
While these pork-barrel projects are almost always necessary, they are controversial in that their implementation is left until the strategic last minute so that the voters have them in mind when they cast their ballots.
Hence Sisulu’s rather busy schedule in the past week.
It was no coincidence that she announced that billions would be ploughed into housing projects for the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan municipality, after the ANC’s national leadership sent Danny Jordaan to fix the city and save the party’s fortunes.
Sisulu and the government she serves did not just wake up one day and realise that such a need existed. But the prospect of losing power in the symbolically important municipality exercised their minds and jolted them into action, as they were in other parts of the country where they saw the possibility of having their majorities eaten into.
One can read Dlamini in two ways. It is either through the critical eye that sees it as an abuse of the emotions of voters who should have been serviced much earlier, or as an indication that electoral democracy serves its purpose by keeping politicians alive to the needs of the people.
Both readings would be correct. But the former would hold more water. There is no reason those tasked with disbursing resources need to wait for delivery to coincide with their own needs.
What this does is that it breeds cynicism of the democratic system among citizens.
The refrain that “they only remember us when they want our votes” is becoming common as people see through intentions of politicians.
Make no mistake by thinking that it will stop when the current party loses power. Its successors will most likely mimic them to retain power. And their successors, too.
