The ruling party has asked voters for a renewed mandate to see what happens if they try leaving the copper wire in the electrical grid.
JOHANNESBURG — The African National Congress has pledged to reverse the steep decline of South Africa's public services by committing to a brief, experimental pause in its active dismantling of the state.
Outside a polling station in Soweto, the morning air was thick with the rattling hum and diesel exhaust of private backup generators. Voters queued patiently around the jagged lip of a collapsed water main, waiting to cast their ballots in local elections following a campaign season dominated by the ruling party's promise to break things at a more manageable pace.
Facing unprecedented voter frustration over daily blackouts and dry taps, ANC leadership unveiled a turnaround strategy that relies heavily on municipal officials leaving a small, structural percentage of the budget un-embezzled. Party officials circulated memos to ward councillors across Gauteng province, suggesting they attempt to provide at least one visible public service before the polls close.
We have listened to the masses, and we recognize that our ongoing project of total infrastructural liquidation was perhaps moving a bit too fast.
By late afternoon, election monitors reported a peaceful voting process, interrupted only by the state power utility, Eskom, initiating a scheduled Stage 6 load-shedding event that plunged the ballot-counting centers into absolute darkness.