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Local – Despite local government elections drawing closer, and the IEC’s ongoing campaign to encourage voter turnout, many South Africans remain unconvinced that a change in leadership will bring any real change to their daily lives.
For Saber Manjoo, Chairperson of the Greenside Residents Association, that scepticism has translated into action rather than resignation. He believes it is up to residents themselves, not politicians, to stop their communities from continuing to deteriorate.
Faced with mounting service delivery failures affecting water, roads and general infrastructure, the resident’s association chose not to wait for council intervention.
Members raised funds among local businesses to repair some of the suburb’s worst potholes and led a project to repaint over 40 faded street names, restoring order to the area even after council had warned that residents undertaking such work could face fines.
“We took the decision to go ahead and fix the real problematic potholes in our area, despite knowing that the council did release statements that we could be fined.”
Relationship With the City Of Johannesburg
That willingness to act independently has, at times, put the association at odds with local government. Manjoo pointed to a long-stalled application for the community to formally adopt and maintain a neglected, overgrown green space along a nearby spruit, an area increasingly used for informal camping and overrun by invasive plant growth.
Rather than wait indefinitely for approval, the association has continued maintaining the space on its own, simply notifying council of its actions as it goes.
“It’s bizarre, our application for that has been sitting with council now for over a year. They have acknowledged the receipt but haven’t given us the go-ahead at all.”
That experience has shaped Manjoo’s broader outlook on the upcoming elections. While he continues to encourage residents to vote, he is doubtful that a change at the top will meaningfully alter conditions on the ground, insisting instead that lasting change depends on ordinary residents taking responsibility at a grassroots level.
“Changing the top is not going to change the situation necessarily because we all know politics is politics that will remain politics. But if you want long-term sustainable change, we as individuals need to get involved.”
