DA Shows How to run a City - But Will Voters Notice?

Sent to "The Star, Johannesburg", Sat 04/12/2010 08:54 & published

 

I refer to Mariano Castrillion's November 29 attack on, and Cllr Ross Greeff's December 1 defence of, mayor Amos Masondo, and subsequent discussion.

The way the ANC and the DA run a city makes for interesting contrasts.

The ANC in Johannesburg spends our money bragging that we are a "World-Class African City", though this is obviously not true: The tame lapdog of the advertising industry, the Advertising Standards Authority, predictably fudges the issue.

The DA, instead, spends ratepayers' money on actually making the City of Cape Town work.

But here's the scary part:

In my field, the personal computer industry, Lotus Corporation devoted itself to building excellent software. Microsoft Corporation wrote mediocre programs and put its money into marketing.

Today Microsoft is market leader and Lotus is a small subsidiary of IBM.

As James Thurber said, you can fool too many of the people too much of the time!