In this the first installment of an ongoing (hopefully) series on the May elections, we sit down with the Democratic Alliance’s councillor Johan Matthee at Umsobomvu Municipality. We hope that other parties will jump on board and make their voices heard.
The Johan Matthee who upped and left Joburg some two decades ago was a different variant – a numbers man with a crop of hair who was going through a rough patch in his personal life – to the painfully sincere, self-deprecating and bald DA councillor sat before me today. We’d arrived a little early for the interview to circumvent the usual hurdles that dog small-time reporters: usually the subject, if he’s not showing us who’s boss by standing us up, he’s usually making us wait, or demanding to first see the questions, or any of the multifold of vanity moves these guys sometimes pull.
Not Matthee, who promptly slides the mouse aside, pulls up a chair and it’s time to get on with it. Originally from Joburg, he was frequently town-hopping throughout the years he spent as a senior financial advisor at a major insurance firm. When he returned home to be met with divorce papers he decided that ‘Gauteng was too small for the two of us,’ so he packed up and set to get his head straight in nearby Gariep where his parents lived. Soon headhunted by another firm, he found himself an inkommer to Colesberg, figured he’d hang around for a bit and twenty years later he’s still here, albeit having put away the financial ledgers for a second term on the town Council.
Being the lone white face in Council, doesn’t it sometimes feel a little lonely? Not at all, he says. On the contrary, given his experience and knowledge of local governance, he finds that his input is always accorded serious weight. The relationship amongst the councillors, speaker and mayor are generally cordial and he’s never really been in the business of seeing colour, he says. He’s quick to point out that when the Umsobomvu Residents Association (URA) were campaigning during the last local government elections and subsequently bagged a few seats, there was some hostility in the chambers ‘but it seems that they’ve since matured.’
‘The Council,’ he says, ‘is very much service-delivery orientated’ but does concede that, as with most municipalities, they are facing some financial challenges. ‘There is a huge complement of people in Umsobomvu that don’t pay their municipality accounts simply because they get their electricity directly from Eskom. It’s not sold by the municipality hence the municipality cannot exercise any form of credit control on them, meaning to say disconnecting their electricity and forcing them to pay.’
In an attempt to remedy this, the municipality has for years ‘engaged with Eskom to transfer the infrastructure to the council instead, but [the parastatal] wouldn’t budge.’ Lowryville, he says, is supplied by the municipality ‘and if they fall short on their other services like refuge removal and water and all of that, the meters are blocked, forcing them to pay their accounts and that’s a form of credit control.’
Norvalspont, Kwazanoxolo township in Noupoort and several other townships account for the 40% of electricity in Umsobomvu that is supplied by Eskom hence ‘the municipality depends a lot on conditional grants from treasury to make do what we can.’ Electricity and housing are pivotal issues, both existentially as well as on the campaign trail.
During the course of eParkeni’s reportage, we have encountered scores of people specifically from Lowryville, many on welfare who simply can’t afford to pay their rates and don’t have the ‘luxury’ – as unpatriotic as that may be – of simply not paying. One especially heartbreaking story is that of Madri Plaatjies.
An unemployed single mother of three, including a four and two-year-old, the household’s only source of income are the children’s social grants and Madri’s social relief of distress grant of R350 which all amount to a monthly R1850. When we were first introduced to Madri her miserable situation was writ large on her soot-stained walls, the stench of smoke heavy in her two-roomed matchbox. Since around November 2022, she says, her meter box has been blocked, meaning no electricity for the family.
Initially she’d relied on a paraffin stove but the rising prices of the fuel have meant that she now makes do with a tin brazier which, despite the potential health hazards on her offspring, is often hauled inside during the dreadful Karoo winter. So I ask Johan whether there is no recourse for such people.
‘There’s a certain criteria, and if people fall into that criteria they qualify for indigent status and they get a certain amount of water and electricity for free.’ But he soon, rather begrudgingly, says that ‘there’s nothing for free in life … that money comes directly from treasury and they need to register for indigent.’
The other pressing matter locally: the protests on the back of the SANRAL projects from October last year? ‘There’s a number of contractors [that arrived] and then they ‘favoured’ (the inverted commas gestured by his fingers) – it’s alleged that they favoured a certain political party and employed their supporters and the rest were overlooked.’
But what was your stance as the DA on the matter? ‘We raised it in Council as a concern. The ruling party flat-out denied being involved, however from what we get from our supporters out there is that if they can’t show a certain party’s membership card, they are told to please move on. So there’s enough evidence to say there is such a thing.’
How does he feel, morally, if these people do indeed have a legitimate claim that they were being overlooked? ‘I’m going to quote myself, what I said in Council, I faced the mayor and the chief whip in council and I said to them ”people, hunger hasn’t got party colours, hunger hasn’t got skin colour, hunger doesn’t know the difference between men and women, these people are people with dependants they need to feed and we need to look after them across the board. You cannot for the sake of making it an election foefie to say ”we will only favour our own.”
Hoping for an inside scoop on whether the DA is indeed in possible coalition talks with the ANC he said he couldn’t comment as there was no communication from the higher-ups on the matter.
PA leader Gayton McKenzie says the DA is dead in the Northern Cape, his thoughts? He guffaws, ‘I only started laughing when you said “Gayton McKenzie” because he’s a joke. That man is not a credible person. He favours the so-called coloureds.’ They lost a number of supporters to the PA, he says, and within three months said supporters were all back with the DA again. ‘Gayton McKenzie needs to wake up and smell the roses … and what we do know about him is that he’s in bed with the ruling party at the moment.’
A few days earlier eParkeni had published a piece on CapeXit and were keen to hear his take. ‘At one point,’ he says, ‘there was talk that the Northern Cape wants out from the Republic. CapeXit seems to be on hold but the DA is trying to force the hand of the police minister to hand over policing to the province, likewise with PRASA [and other parastatals] but the ruling party is not in favour of any of that.’ He does however believe that with a coalition government such things will happen a lot quicker.
Does he support the Exit, though? No. Not quite, ‘we remain one country. I would rather see us as one country in unity but I also see merit in the fact that instead of centralising the police, railways, harbours and all that, to give provinces more of their own authority.’
The DA is often fingered as ‘a white party,’ how does he feel about this? The party’s support base alone, he says, quickly renders that a fallacy and he points out that surely such parties exist, the DA, he says, is not one of them.
Amid several interruptions ( the man clearly has his hands full) we were able to sneak in one last question before his charges – proudly clad in party colours – had urgent business to handle with the toppie.
Why should I vote DA? ‘That’s the only alternative to the ruling party; who’s not corrupt, who’s proven themselves in the province of the Western Cape for clean governance and even the AG (Auditor-General) singles out [the province] to be the best-governed province and municipalities in the country apart from Midvaal.’
Oh, before I forget, I’d noticed that the signposts appeared to have fewer DA posters on them compared to previous campaigns, might this be an indication of things not looking too good in the party. Again, he chuckled. Not at all, simply a matter of not having received a lot of posters and an ever-expanding Colesberg in area.
Having finally ‘earned the right to retire,’ this will be Johan’s last term in Council. He says although they have achieved a great deal, he realises there is yet so much more to be done. Indeed, all we hope for in this regard is that people like Madri and her little children will be prioritised in the more that still needs to be done.