Major local government overhaul to begin next year {writer: Stef Terblanche}

The writing is on the wall for local government as we know it. And exciting things are about to happen.

A major overhaul of municipal governance and local service delivery is on the way, while in some cases even the structure and boundaries of municipalities could be affected. The implementation of a turnaround strategy is to start early next year.

This was decided by representatives from all three tiers of government and other stakeholders attending the National Indaba on Local Government in Ekurhuleni  on 22 October, following the recent surge in violent service delivery protests.

The indaba had been preceded by a high-level meeting between President Jacob Zuma and most of the country’s 283 mayors and municipal managers, provincial premiers and 15 Cabinet ministers in Cape Town.

This development may be viewed as a fourth phase in the process to democratise and improve South Africa’s system of local government.

In a paper written for the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa), Dr Michael Sutcliffe, former chairperson of the Municipal Demarcation Board and now city manager of eThekwini, said it was decided in 1993 that the democratisation of local government would occur in three phases, culminating in the phase marked by the demarcation of South Africa’s municipalities and the holding of municipal elections in December 2005.

According to Sutcliffe, the new municipal system aimed to ensure more functional economic, financial and administrative bases; more representative and focused political structures; better administrative systems allowing for greater participatory democracy; and more equitable, efficient and effective financial arrangements.

Also, in 1994 the government’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) stated the lofty ideal of the national government wishing “to unlock the political and creative energies of the people and bring the government closer to the people”, with local government playing a key role.

What then went wrong? Everyone today seems to ‘know’ that local government in South Africa is in a mess.

What went wrong, according to the State of Local Government Report released by the government on 20 October, is that there are “huge service delivery and backlog challenges; poor communication and accountability relationships with communities; fraud and corruption; problems with the political administrative interface; poor financial management; wasteful spending; violent service delivery protests; weak civil society formations; contested political environments; intra- and inter-political party issues negatively affecting governance and delivery; insufficient municipal capacity due to lack of scarce skills; a breakdown of local democracy; and a widespread culture of patronage and nepotism”.

According to the report, 64 of South Africa’s 283 municipalities are in financial “distress”, accompanied by an “escalating loss of confidence in governance”.

The report was drawn up from the nine provincial reports following nationwide assessments between April and August 2009. This process was initiated by the Minister for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka to ascertain the root causes of the current problems with a view to informing a National Turnaround Strategy for Local Government.

Over the last decade or more, it became clear that there were serious problems in local government when one negative audit report after the other was issued by the Auditor-General.

AG Terence Nombembe says municipalities across the board have received far more “disclaimed” opinions, the worst category of audit report, than have departments at any of the other two tiers of government.

Nombembe says the problem is not a lack of skills – though there are shortages – but rather one of a lack of compliance.

The oft-mooted issue of a lack of skills has become a handy excuse for municipalities not to perform their duty in this regard, he adds.

However, the problems were not only confined to financial management. In many municipalities, roads were crumbling, water became undrinkable, towns were not being kept neat and clean, houses were not being allocated, refuse was not being collected regularly, billing problems were encountered, corruption and nepotism was rife, and much more.

When citizens wanted to complain about the state of affairs to councillors, no one listened or did anything. There were exceptions, but these were few.

Growing dissatisfaction and service delivery protests erupted in the Free State, Gauteng and the North West, spreading later to other provinces. In September, Statistics South Africa released its General Household Survey which also showed that dissatisfaction with service delivery
had increased.

Although there had been municipal service delivery protests for the past six years, it was only the recent surge and the fact that a new government was in place which prompted serious action to be taken.

“We must respond to issues before people go to the streets,” a worried Minister Shiceka told the National Indaba on Local Government.

National government decided on a plan of action. The first hint of this came early in October when Deputy Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Yunus Carrim indicated at a conference of the Institute of Municipal Finance Officers in Johannesburg that a major overhaul of local government was coming. Carrim said the current local government model was “not working”.

“We cannot afford to let local government continue the way it does. We need changes,” he said.

Among the possible remedies Carrim proposed, were amendments to the Municipal Finance Management Act guided by local government; dumping the two-tier system of district and local municipalities which many had come to criticise; simplifying financial rules and stepping up financial training for councillors and municipal officials; and creating more lasting professional local government by discouraging political parties from implementing “populist and short-term” measures.

As part of the process to implement a turnaround strategy, a series of stakeholder engagements was held, most importantly a meeting between President Zuma and mayors and municipal managers in Cape Town.

Zuma echoed Carrim’s call for “fundamental changes” in the way South Africa’s municipalities were governed. And Minister Shiceka said a framework National Local Government Turnaround Strategy would be formulated by December, the details of which were to be thrashed out at the National Indaba. The strategy would be presented to the Cabinet by December, after wide consultation.

From January, municipalities must develop their own turnaround strategies based on the national framework, accommodating different needs and involving broader participation from the community and other stakeholders.

The Department of Co-operative Governance is to submit a Green Paper outlining a more ‘co-operative’ form of government with improved co-ordination and co-operation between the three tiers of government.

The Green Paper is to propose greater political oversight at municipal level, with mayors and councillors being better informed. It would also seek to strengthen accountability through the chain of authority from mayors to managers to staff.

At the National Indaba, Shiceka listed key areas that required attention in order to arrive at the goal of “an ideal municipality”. These include “deepening people-centred government” by revamping the municipal ward system and strengthening its role and reforming the intergovernmental fiscal system.

Shiceka introduced the government’s Vision 2014 for local government. The political aspect thereof, under the slogan “one country, one president, one system”, is strongly aligned to resolutions adopted by the African National Congress at its national conference held in December 2007 in Polokwane.

This would see a single election for all three tiers of government, at which a manifesto with a five-year programme of priorities would be launched. It also aims to halve poverty and unemployment by 2014, empower and capacitate street, block and section committees and ward committees.

The administrative or governance part of the vision envisages that all provinces and municipalities should have clean audits by 2014; clean cities must be achieved through waste management programmes that create employment and wealth; infrastructure backlogs are to be reduced; service delivery protests eliminated; and municipal debt reduced by half.

The 1 100 delegates to the National Indaba adopted a declaration that supports the framework National Turnaround Strategy, the proposed Green Paper and a subsequent White Paper, and calls for a more effective system of evaluating municipal performance.

The delegates resolved that the turnaround strategy should address strengthening political accountability; building inclusive communities; developing a common classification of municipalities and a differentiated approach for municipalities; reviewing the legislative and regulatory framework of local government; addressing poverty arising both from urban growth and migration and rural under-development; reviewing the financial and fiscal model; rooting out corruption; ensuring an appropriate role for traditional leaders in local government; and identifying and addressing areas of dysfunctionality among municipalities.

The indaba called for further broad-based consultation before the government finalised the strategy, after which every municipality must develop its own specific municipal turnaround plan by March 2010 with active assistance from provincial governments.

The relatively strong focus on political elements in the framework strategy is bound to necessitate amendments to the Constitution and a number of other legislative additions, as Shiceka warned the National Assembly already in August.

Shiceka said at the time that the government also wanted to engage opposition parties, but added that a condition of such engagement was that opposition parties “must accept that the outcome [of the strategy] might require us to amend the laws”.

Implementation of the turnaround strategy is to begin countrywide in March.

From January, municipalities must develop their own turnaround strategies based on the national framework

• Add New
• Search

Comments (0)

Write comment

Your Contact Details:

Name:

Email: do not notifynotify

Comment:

Title:

Message:

Security

Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 4.0 beta2