By MAEDER OSLER
The Umsobomvu Local Municipality has launched a new communication initiative in the form of a digital newsletter. The first edition — Quarters 1 and 2 – covers the period from July to December 2024. To access the newsletter, click here.
As readers will see, it opens as a flipbook, with pages than can be turned online, but can also be downloaded as a normal PDF.
When I first opened this new local government newsletter, I was delighted. This is because effective communication between governments and citizens – and particularly local governments and local residents – are vital for well-functioning democracies, and because in the ‘New South Africa’ this has often been lacking.
Attractively designed, and easy to read, the newsletter provides a systematic account of the activities of this important local government, and invites critical engagement. Among others, it deals with issues of service delivery, development, finances, water, sewage, roads, housing, small business, food control, health and the plight of the very poor (‘indigents’).
At the same time, due to restricted access to the internet and limited literacy, it won’t solve all of the municipality’s communication problems. Information will continue to be circulated verbally, via local talk, stoep talk, street talk, manipulated talk, straight talk and twisted talk. Optimists and pessimists alike will continue to hold their half full or half empty glasses.
The various local ‘stakeholders’ – ratepayers and other local citizens — can be expected to have their own understanding and version of events and processes. Independent local media should also play a role.
This includes independent portraits of civic life such as Phakamisa Mayaba’s eParkeni website, Janco Piek’s Colesberg Information site, Mbulelo Kafi’s Sakhisizwe and his own Facebook sites, including on entrepreneurship and tourism, as well as Toverview, including our coverage of housing controversies, jobs for pals, local business, agriculture and farming, history and local identity, and other topics impacting on people’s lives in this rural area. All of this is in anticipation of the next round of local government elections, due in 2026. Indeed, one wonders whether this has played a role in the municipality’s decision to start talking to its residents, claiming progress on various levels.
But be that as it may – politics are politics, and from our room with a view, this is a useful and praiseworthy initiative – an example of rural communication that should be replicated elsewhere. And at the end of the day it is up to citizens – the residents in a given local government area — to play an active role.
In many respects the municipality – which is headquartered in Colesberg – is doing a fine job, as the newsletter understandably seeks to reflect. People will know of the massive investments in wind farms in the mountains near Noupoort and its potential to save the settlement, since the disastrous freeze of the old railway network. So too the developments around the Xhariep Dam, which could benefit the desperately poor community of Norvalspont.
People will be familiar with the benefits of the growing numbers of prominent commercial companies that have established themselves in Umsobomovu. They will also be familiar with the extent of divisions on a local level, in many cases with their roots deep in the past. This is, in effect, another hung municipality, where leadership remains a contested issue.
According to the municipal mission statement, the word Umsobomu means a state of continual rising, and google translates it as a new dawn. This seems particularly apposite, as it points to the potential of local government in our newly democratic and supposedly non-disciminatory country, but also the major difficulties that have surrounded the realisation of these ideals – up to the provincial and also the national levels.
From this room with a view, there is no doubt about the potential of this area, drawing on its complex, diverse and also often conflictual past, and turning this into an asset for the future.This points to the need to heal traditional divisions, and rising above the outdated roles and practices of the established gatekeers and ideological chancers.
Meanwhile, in the coming year, we aim to track developments at the local governance level more closely, and these newsletters will provide us — and local citizens — with a far better starting point.