Keep Local Government Stable

If there is one lesson South Africa should have learnt from its short history of fully fledged democracy since 1994, it is that – at particularly local government level – elections can be very unsettling and even destabilising if the necessary checks and balances are not in place and functioning properly, with integrity.

No one concerned with local government can, or should, forget the spectacle at bureaucratic management level after the previous municipal elections when the democracy we have chosen for ourselves as a nation took its normal course.

At a number of local authorities, political control saw a change of hands. In many instances, this led to the redeployment or laying-off of political appointees at managerial level.

Not only is this a destabilising affair, but it is also often a costly one to compensate people for the early termination of employment contracts.

In a functional democracy, it is critical for continuity in service delivery and longer term stable development to have a professional and politically neutral civil service in place. Under the principle of separation of power, it is not – and should not be – acceptable that the civil service is a mere extension of any political party.

It would have been naïve to have expected this to be the perfect scenario in the wake of a freedom struggle immediately after it had taken its full logical course at the 1994 elections.

As the previous round of municipal elections has proved, however, the time has arrived for South Africa now to normalise that aspect of our democracy.

It is against this background that the introduction of the Municipal Systems Amendment Bill in parliament should be welcomed. It is paramount that the Bill, which will bring to an end the practice of cadre deployment, should become law before next year’s municipal elections.

During the times of high pressure brought about by elections and often a change of government at individual municipalities, a neutral and professional civil service has a pivotal role to play to keep things stable until the political temperature settles again.

Piet Coetzer