April 10, 2007
By Neil Fraser
THERE have been intriguing reports in the media in the past week regarding the Kaserne Parking Garage in Harrison Street. The building had evidently been turned into an informal settlement housing hundreds of squatters and their families as well as a number of informal businesses.
The latter included brothels and shebeens, food and cigarette sellers and a photocopying business servicing the adjacent Department of Home Affairs building whose customers are required to have copies made of a variety of documents. Some of the residents were clearly quite opportunistic even though the conditions they were living in were appalling - a Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department officer is reported to have said that there were no ablution facilities inside the building, "hence the stench".
The story raises a number of issues. Clearly the illegal occupation had been going on for some time – I heard one comment of at least two years – so why had it taken so long for action to have been taken? Secondly, the building is supposed to be used as a rank for taxis, so where had they been ranking if not there and why hadn't they raised the problem with the authorities? Thirdly, how does the City learn more timeously about such issues before they become problems?
Quite co-incidentally, as part of the run-up to the Inner City Summit and Charter, a workshop was held with a variety of stakeholders during the week to debate exactly these sorts of questions and to seek solutions.
Listening to the talk around the table, I couldn't help but think just how much our so called civil society had disintegrated over the past few decades and how this seemed to be centred in our cities. We all know and acknowledge the root causes of the disintegration, but we are now in our 13th year of a democratic state and we seem to be getting worse, not better. I wondered if, in fact, this ongoing deterioration isn't due in a large way to the erratic permissiveness of local government.
Erratic permissiveness
I use the term "erratic permissiveness" because we seem to have developed a mentality of ignoring problems when they occur and then, only when they have developed beyond a certain level, do we go in to sort them out. I call that a "blitz mentality" – let things get so bad that you can no longer ignore them and then go in with all guns blazing. Thereafter fill the media with stories about how good we are – we cleared out X tons of waste from the area; we arrested Y number of known criminals, druglords and so forth; and we sent Z number of illegal immigrants back to where they came from.
No one seems to be asking why X tons of waste were allowed to accumulate in the area in the first place; why authorities were not dealing with the criminals and illegal immigrants as a matter of course and not under a programme called "Operation Recover our Streets", soon to be forgotten and the situation allowed to repeat itself.
What has consistently come out of a variety of workshops over the past few months is a plea to the council to do its job every day and not once in a while when things are out of hand. Members have clearly taken the point as they are closely examining a new approach to the urban management of the city that should foster a day-by-day style.
I say "should" because there are, I believe, some structural difficulties inherent in the system. One of these is the divided accountability that comes from having intensified silo management by having created a whole range of "independent" municipal entities. If departments didn't talk to each other previously when they were all "in" the same organisation, it is so much worse now that the structure is fragmented.
It leads me to wonder how much time is actually spent by decision-makers debating the possible negative consequences of their decisions. The political gerrymandering of the metro area into four metro sub-structures in the mid-1990s led to the "sharing out" of council resources across the four areas. I believe we have never recovered from this, even though it was dropped five years later.
The consequences included demoralised staff and lost systems and processes.
So there I was at a workshop where a suggestion was made that a system be implemented whereby every council official, irrespective of department or municipal entity, should report all incidents they come across, irrespective of their own discipline - incidents such as accumulated piles of rubbish, street lights not working, pavements dug up and not fixed.
New system
Surely that is the responsibility of every council official anyway. The fact that one now has to design a process whereby a Pikitup truck driver reports a broken stop sign and a Joburg Water meter reader reports accumulated waste piles is, to me, a terrible indictment of the system.
How many council officials were aware of the festering problem at the Kazerne Parking Garage and said nothing? How many said something only to be ignored?
The discussion made me think back to when I got my driving licence (now some 50 years ago!) - how it was a time of courtesy and consideration of other road users; how traffic rules and regulations were to be obeyed - and were obeyed. Crossing an unbroken line and going through stop streets or red traffic lights were virtually mortal sins, while letting another car into a vehicle queue was a normal courtesy.
Today, every day, vehicles (and it's not just taxis) use the emergency lanes to "beat the traffic"; white lines are invisible; red traffic lights are green; and if the queue to turn right is too long, start a new one in parallel and don't worry about the line of drivers you are blocking behind you.
Traffic chaos
Taxis deliberately block intersections, causing frustration and chaos. I've had occasion to drive over the Nelson Mandela Bridge a number of times in the past week, where I repeatedly saw taxis using the left lane, which gives access to the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, to turn right, forcing themselves ahead of the queue at the traffic lights.
At the junction of the M2 off-ramp and Jan Smuts Avenue there is a triangular designated no-go area at the intersection of the two roads that is now used as a "taxi lane" to jump the queues. Get stuck behind a slow moving truck and those cars behind you are simply not prepared to hold back long enough to let you pull out to overtake the bottleneck.
Fifty years ago you didn't even think of doing those things – you were taught good road manners and if you broke the law you were quickly penalised. After years of inaction we now fairly regularly see metro police officers parked in the emergency lane of the freeway and, miracle of miracles, users of the emergency lane are few.
It's a pity we don't see metro police officers at traffic intersections such as at De Villiers and Rissik streets, or at the Nelson Mandela Bridge or … And when we do see them around the corner of an off ramp, ticketing cellphone users, we note that on the other side of the street are dozens of squeegee operators intimidating drivers but being ignored by the officers.
Zero tolerance
Articles that preceded the New York implementation of a "zero tolerance" approach argued that what might appear to be trivial irritations gave the impression that things were falling apart and led one to feel vulnerable about greater possible harms. A typical comment of that time was, "If the city doesn't care about one aspect of its citizens' lives it probably doesn't care about others."
In fact, as was later proved, ignoring aggressive begging, lackadaisical refuse collection, public drinking, excessive noise and de facto decriminalised drug selling led directly to soaring crime. "The devil-may-care atmosphere emboldened wrongdoers and a pervasive demoralisation made ordinary New Yorkers anxious, pessimistic, alienated from civic life, slow to go into the city for pleasure, and quick to leave town for good."
Disorder gives the citizens of a city a sense that things are falling apart, that society is doomed, that there is no order in the universe nor in local government.
William Bratton, an erstwhile police commissioner of both Boston and New York and one of those credited with the New York turnaround, says: "They [the police] were openly giving freedom of the streets to the drug dealers, the gangs, the prostitutes, the drinkers and the radio blasters. A sense of fear and anarchy pervaded many neighbourhoods.
"The traditional order-keeping forces, the responsible adults in these communities, played less of a role as their own fear and uncertainty grew. They – along with the wrongdoers – had gotten the message that even the cops didn't care, and they were understandably hesitant to put themselves on the line."
Somehow we need to get back to a society that understands right from wrong and that breaking even minor laws will result in punishment, a society that collectively doesn't allow parking garages to be turned into squatter settlements and brothels, and a society that cares and provides for its disadvantaged citizens as much as for its advantaged.
Until then, we will continue to make great strides in repairing the fabric of the city, but allowing its soul slowly to disintegrate.
Neil
Parktown and Westcliff Heritage Trust walking and bus tours
The costs below are for members and non-members respectively. Bookings can be made at Computicket on 011 340 8000 or through the Computicket website. For more information, phone 011 482 3349 in the mornings only.
Saturday, April 14: Highveld Habitats bus tour looks at trends in housing and lifestyles. The cost is R100 and R115 and the tour takes approximately three hours.
Sunday, April 22: Hills of Worship walking tour includes a visit to significant graves at Westpark Cemetery, en route to the prayer circles in the hills. The cost is R50 and R70 and the tour takes about three hours.
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