Towards better delivery, or centralised power grab? {writer: Staff reporter}

The latest round of violent service delivery protests has again put the spotlight on the need for the government to solve problems in the provinces and municipalities.

But a part of the government’s response to these problems has come under fire from critics, claiming it is nothing but a thinly disguised attempt to centralise power at the expense of local and provincial governments and of other political parties.

Not so, say national government and the ANC – their intentions are focused solely on improved delivery and development.

While that may be true to a large extent, a considerable degree of power politics has also crept into the picture.

It is no secret that the ANC has, for several years now, been seeking a review of the system of provincial and local government and the public service.

The process, which began at the ANC’s 2002 national conference and was punted in its 2004 election manifesto, gained momentum at the ANC’s national policy conference in June 2007, and finally resulted in various resolutions at the watershed national conference held in Polokwane in December 2007.

It was decided initially that there was a need “for a comprehensive review of this system (of provinces), taking into account the distribution of powers and functions between different spheres of government as well as within the two-tier system of local government with a view to assessing whether this contributes to the attainment of our developmental goals”.

The conference noted that the review and the policy process to be initiated in the government “might impact on the Constitution and the structure of government as we go into the next elections”.

It was further decided that there were “a number of matters related to local government and intergovernmental relations that require policy review”.

Then at Polokwane, the ANC resolved to “lead and drive the process of the unification of the administration in the three spheres of government in a “single public service”, and that a structure be established within a sub-committee of the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) to support this.

The conference resolved that “the incoming NEC must ensure that an ANC summit is held to formulate an input into the process to develop a White Paper on Provincial Government and to review the Local Government White Paper”. This process is currently in full swing.

The ANC denies that it wants to scrap the provinces. Only this month, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said it was not the case, quipping that ANC provincial premiers had tasted power – a suggestion that there could be resistance to any such move in the ANC in the provinces.

But a number of developments underscore the ANC’s growing predilection towards scrapping the provincial system and centralising powers and functions.

Key among these is a team, led by the new Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka, finalising a report on “looking at the future of provinces, whether they will exist or not”.

The future of provinces will be decided by March next year, Shiceka says.

He added that the government was forging ahead with the Constitution 17th Amendment Bill aimed at giving considerable powers to the national government to intervene in provinces and municipalities, sidelining the provinces.

In August, while delivering a public lecture at Wits University, Deputy Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Yunus Carrim shed more light on the government’s almost completed policy paper entitled, The Review of the Powers and Functions of the Three Spheres
of Government.

Carrim for the first time confirmed the options under consideration, which until then, had only been speculated about.

These options include retaining the status quo; retaining the nine provinces with substantially reduced powers and functions; reducing the numbers of provinces and merging some of them; retaining the provinces as mere administrative units; or, lastly, phasing out the provinces altogether.

Which option will finally be adopted, is not clear yet. What is clear, however, is that a significant alteration of the entire structure of government is about to take place, with profound implications for the constitutional dispensation that was certified by the Constitutional Court.

The motivation for this is multiple: strengthening national government’s grip on delivery; improving delivery at local government through central intervention; cutting out duplication and multiplicity of services, structures and budgets; cost savings by removing expensive and often corrupt provincial governments; and centralising and monopolising power.

Strengthening the case of those who argue that the ANC may already have decided to go this route, are a number of recent developments.

Not only has the national ministry dealing with provinces and local government been restructured and renamed to omit reference to the other tiers of government, but it also seems likely that the national government is centralising greater powers to intervene in provincial and local government within the Presidency through the Ministry of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation and the National Planning Ministry, both of which are new and are located in the Presidency.

Then there was the hasty decision by the Cabinet on the eve of the general election to approve the draft Constitution 17th Amendment Bill, as well as the promise by the new Minister of Public Service and Administration Richard Baloyi to reintroduce the shelved Public Service Amendment Bill.

The National Planning Ministry – together with its proposed National Planning Commission and Ministerial Planning Committee – will involve itself more at the overall policy level; and its main function, according to National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel, is to “co-ordinate the process whereby government develops its long-term vision and plan”.

This, Manuel says, had to take into account the key long-term challenges facing South Africa in articulating the vision for the type of society that South Africans desire.

Manuel sees as the other major task of the planning function, Cabinet’s collective agreement to the medium- term strategic framework (MTSF) that has to set out the government’s priorities, inform resource allocation and provide a framework for the sequencing of programmes and reforms.

Manuel says that the MTSF then needs to be broken down into detailed outcomes that could inform the priorities of
the government.

When unveiling his National Planning Green Paper recently, Manuel ruled out any command-type centralised planning as had failed in the old Soviet Union and in China, which seems to go somewhat against the grain of the perceived centralisation tendency in the ANC.  

Manuel said the Commission will not undertake micro-planning from the centre, but will rather support and harness sectoral and sub-national strategic planning and initiatives and mainstream these within the national planning process, thus “giving concrete expression to sectoral priorities and priorities emanating from provinces and municipalities”.

While this undoubtedly will facilitate a clearer integrated vision and co-operation, it will nonetheless most likely strengthen central planning and control at the expense of control by departments, provinces and local government, some observers believe.

So much concern has this generated outside the ANC, that in August former president FW de Klerk met with President Jacob Zuma to raise his concerns about the future of the provinces and the threat to their special status in the constitutional settlement that was reached during the constitutional negotiations held in Kempton Park.

After the meeting at Tuynhuys, De Klerk said: “I emphasised the necessity, which I firmly believe, that we should not in any way undermine the historical compromise which is encapsulated in our Constitution.

“We struck a balance between becoming a federalised state and a centralised one.

“There is a hybrid somewhere in between a federalised and a centralised state and I believe it is very important that the delicate balance should not be disturbed,” he said.

Raenette Taljaard, director of the Helen Suzman Foundation, argued in an article in The Times that the key issue was that the Constitutional Assembly had opted for the hybrid system, of which De Klerk speaks, in a process that gave South Africa its founding document.

“This cannot simply be replaced by a ‘policy paper’ process within a government department,” she said.

“It is clear that the number of violent service delivery protests has shaken government to the core, and that serious-minded individuals are asking tough questions about service delivery.

“But we have to be very careful not to try and fix the symptoms instead of
the problem.”

Like De Klerk, an angry Western Cape Premier Helen Zille also requested a meeting with President Zuma to discuss the matter. She said the government’s intention to scrap the provinces and forge ahead with the Constitution 17th Amendment Bill would deal a fatal blow to the letter and spirit of the Constitution.

The Constitution, Zille said, provides for three spheres of government – at national, provincial and local level. The constitutional principles of co-operative governance require all three spheres of government to “exercise their powers and perform their functions in a manner that does not encroach on the geographical, functional or institutional integrity of government in another sphere”.

And the Constitution is very clear about the nature of those executive and legislative powers in the provinces, says Zille. “These are the federal aspects of the Constitution that do not threaten South Africa’s democracy, but deepen it,”
she contends.

There may, however, be a number of obstacles in the way of the national government scrapping the provinces and usurping more local government powers.

Firstly, any constitutional amendment to scrap the provinces would have to be approved by a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, which the ANC does not have. However, it probably could overcome this with the help of one or two of the smaller parties.

Next, such a step would require a majority vote in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP), which would mean the relatively powerful members of the NCOP would be voting themselves out of a job, out of their income and benefit packages and out of power. Not all that likely.

Thirdly, as the ANC’s Mantashe has pointed out, provincial premiers who have tasted power – and there are eight of the nine in the ANC – are not likely to simply step aside.

Another obstacle would be the fact that the DA currently rules the Western Cape.

While that in itself does not present much of an obstacle, the DA would most likely turn to the Constitutional Court where it could cause lengthy delays that could act as a deterrent at least, or it could make out a good case regarding the unconstitutionality of such a move
at best.

In addition, there could be a considerable public outcry to consider.

It seems a period of vigorous debate lies ahead that could still sway all the stakeholders in one or another direction, such as, for example, adopting adjustments that would see only some functions and powers being centralised, with others being devolved down to local level, and the province’s acquiring more of an oversight function rather than one concerned with implementation.

In the meantime, however, recent government and independent assessments of the performance of the nine provinces throw up a serious lack of delivery and many problems. And the same goes for local government.

Some sober assessment and an indication of the possible future direction to take, has been offered by the Financial and Fiscal Commission (FFC) in its recently released 2010/11 submission on the division of revenue.

The FFC proposed a significant change in the way the government allocates funds in order to achieve greater balance in the system and to reverse the trend towards greater centralisation of policy-making
and expenditure.

FFC chairperson Bethuel Setai has fingered a misalignment between national priorities and provincial budgets as being the major obstacle to service delivery. This is particularly so, he says, in the area of funding of concurrent competencies such as housing, education, health and social development.

Setai’s deputy, Bongani Khumalo, believes the trend towards greater centralisation of government functions over the past 15 years was apparent from the increased reliance by national government on conditional funding grants, where government specifies unilaterally how the money should be spent.

And Khumalo views the 17th Constitutional Amendment Bill as another instrument towards centralisation.

The FFC has instead proposed that in the short term, a simple reform of the provincial equitable share formula should be carried out to align it more closely with a conventional equalisation grant. The grant, it says, would equal expenditure needs minus revenue-raising capacity, with each sphere of government being responsible and accountable for its own choices.

In the medium- to long term, the FFC proposes that education and health be separated from the provincial equitable share formula and be converted into delegated functions with distinct conditional block grants, among
other things.

Meanwhile, analysts, politicians and other experts and commentators appear to be divided over whether the government should reduce, abolish or retain the nine provinces, their legislatures, powers
and functions.

One view is that reducing the number of provinces and trimming down their bureaucracies would save money.

Another is that such a move would remove the democratic right of citizens to choose their leaders at a level closer to them than national government.

Another expert says the argument that the provinces were an obstacle in the implementation of national government policy is a false one, as it is rather the efficient implementation of policy and elimination of corruption that needs to
be addressed.

It is also said it is the people being employed who are wasting money, and not the system of provinces.

For this government, the ultimate test would be to separate the real underlying problems of delivery from narrow party political considerations in the provinces, and to be sensitive to any further blurring of the line between party and state.

While there is much room for improvement, the government does not yet seem to have made out a legitimate case for scrapping the provincial system outright. But then, that may not even be in the pipeline.