Political influence on key appointments requires attention {writer: Staff reporter}

The accountant-general’s office at the National Treasury recently reported to parliament’s appropriations committee that R364 million was budgeted for financial management grants to municipalities in 2010/11, up from R299m during the previous budget year.

This money is spent on training interns in various facets of financial management at municipalities. Yet, seven municipalities had their allocations totalling R7.5m withheld this year because of their failure to provide cash flow projections.

Members of the committee expressed their concern that while there are four agencies of government simultaneously involved in addressing “capacity problems” at South Africa’s 283 municipalities, they do not appear to be co-ordinating these activities.

After presentations by the South African Local Government Association (Salga), the Office of the Accountant-General at the National Treasury, the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs – ANC MP and committee chairperson Elliot Sogoni said these groups needed to co-ordinate their plans in future.

Marius Swart of the Democratic Alliance said, after hearing the four entities talk about the millions being spent on capacity building, that “there are still delivery protests, qualified audit reports (at municipalities) and poor financial management”, and the latter appeared to be a growing rather than a receding problem.

He highlighted that local government was owed a backlog in rates and service payments to the tune of R56 billion.

Salga’s Reuben Baatjies, its national director for intergovernmental relations, emphasised that the Association wanted to see an end to political appointments in local government management.

He said Salga wished to “actively discourage political influence and interference in the appointment of staff”, which resulted in politically accepted appointments “at the expense of the necessary and relevant skills required”.

In the interim, government plans have emerged to amend the Municipal Systems Act aimed at prohibiting municipal managers from holding top positions in political parties at local level.

The amendments to the bill propose barring “chairpersons, deputy chairpersons, secretaries, deputy secretaries or treasurers of political parties at national, provincial, regional or any other area in which the party might operate, from being appointed to senior municipal positions.”

Top municipal managers who lacked the basic skills would be barred from being appointed, while municipalities should report to the relevant provincial MEC and Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka when appointing managers.

Shiceka is on record that the bill was aimed at depoliticising local government and professionalising it.

Past experience has shown that local government can be seriously disrupted in some instances when there is a change in administration at election time and could, if passed in time, avoid a recurrence of these situations after next year’s municipal elections.

The bill was given the green light by Cabinet early in August this year, but since then some resistance has come from certain members of the ruling party’s parliamentary caucus. It has, however, been generally welcomed by opposition parties as a way of preventing undue political interference in local government.

According to some reports, ANC leaders in certain provinces are unhappy with the bill and complained that the minister took it to parliament without proper consultation with party structures. There was a likelihood it would be discussed at the party’s national general council, which was scheduled to take place in Durban in September.

Baatjies told members of the parliamentary committee that municipalities often had poor skills bases “and a lack of training and career-pathing”. There was a pattern of under-investment in people, “particularly where technical, management and leadership skills are required”, he added.

Reuben Matlala, from the DBSA, informed the committee about the Bank’s involvement in the Siyenza Manje programme, which involved deploying young professionals in finance, engineering, project management and town planning to municipalities to transfer skills and implement projects “
to eradicate backlogs”.

However, the DBSA reported that about 55% of municipalities had received “poor quality” audit reports. Furthermore, there were insufficient funds to cover projects to address infrastructure backlogs, a lack of adequate billing systems and low revenue bases.

There were high vacancy rates and high turnover of staff in key positions.

The municipal vacancy rate ran at about 33% nationwide.

The DBSA further reported that among the deployees working at municipalities, 180 were technical staff, 72 in finance, 28 in planning, 145 young professionals and 165 artisans.

The Siyenza Manje project cost R456m in 2008/09, up from R313m in 2007/08 and R42m in the 2006/07 budget year.

The DBSA financed 30% of the bill, with the rest of the funds coming from the National Treasury.

About half of the funds made available went to the remuneration of the deployed staff, about 25% to professional service providers, while about 10% was spent on subsistence and travel costs.