I do hope that the next mayor of George learns from the mistakes of the previous one.

As I write this on the eve of the election, it's impossible to guess who that will be - all we can predict for sure is his sex, but that's another story.

Even though Charles Standers was the master of his own political undoing, I can't help but feel sorry for him.
Our former mayor believed that by being ultra controlling, he would be able to keep everything together. Big mistake.

Africans (black and white from all backgrounds) tend to hold the perception that as soon as you occupy THE SEAT, you are the boss of the town or city and that those around you should LISTEN and preferably grovel.

Many mayors think that THE SEAT makes those employed by the municipality (including the councillors) his underlings and praise singers. On top of this, because of Standers's background as a primary school disciplinarian, he often treated his colleagues like naughty children.

Instead of trusting skilled people to do their jobs, he micro managed them and regularly berated and belittled highly experienced and knowledgeable people like City Engineer Harold Basson and Electrotechnical head Kevin Grunewald. He banned them from speaking directly to the media about projects in their departments and instead issued lame one-liners to press queries.

After sending a query to the municipality, we often had to wait for a week or longer only to get a non-committal answer - everything had to be approved by the mayor.

This points to a fair degree of paranoia and distrust in his own officials.

The media liaison officers did their utmost to accommodate our queries, but they had a very tough time getting it off the mayor's desk.

This caused a great divide between the media and the mayor's office and turned out to be counterproductive for George as a whole.

We understand that you cannot divulge all internal matters to the public, but as a public organisation funded by local taxpayers, transparency in council and the municipality is key.

In any organisation where you employ close to a thousand people, mistakes will creep in, but if you run a steady, clean ship, honesty is always the best policy if things do go wrong.

If politicians and municipal managers serve the best interests of the public, they have nothing to fear.

Community journalists are not in the business of dishing dirt where it is not deserved, but when you treat us and the public with disdain and attempt to swat away our questions like annoying flies, that's when we start smelling a rat.
And to use the race card, like Charles Standers, is political suicide.

Mr Mayor, let's keep an open line of communication, regardless of your party affiliation. We have the same goal - a city that provides a good life for all.

And to end off my little self indulgent sermon: Please Mr Mayor, don't force your media spokesman to start every press release with "The Honourable Executive Mayor of George....".