Tensions over service delivery still simmer despite a turnaround plan {writer: Stef Terblanche }

While the excitement and the hype surrounding the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup has been able to temporarily obscure many of the challenges faced by South Africa, local government service delivery is one challenge that continues to confront ordinary citizens on a daily basis.

With stories of gross delivery failures and disenchanted citizens taking to the streets in protest having become quite commonplace, the government responded to
the problem.

On 2 December last year, the Cabinet approved the local government turnaround strategy. However, seven months later, little progress is evident.

That would be an incorrect assumption, however, as the government at all levels is hard at work grappling with this immense and complicated problem. The core of the problem still seems to revolve around poor financial management and a lack of skilled personnel, although a number of other suspected structural inadequacies are also being looked at.

The turnaround strategy adopted by Cabinet in December recognises a one-size-fits-all approach will not work and that a more segmented and differentiated approach was required.

It further recognised that the problems in local government resulted both from internal factors as well as external factors, over which municipalities having little control.

The turnaround strategy aims to accelerate service delivery, improve skills and capacity, ensure better internal controls and finance management, and step up accountability toward making all municipalities functional and effective.

The strategy, which will serve as a road map for local government, encompasses a 10-point plan for local government which seeks to achieve:

• Vastly improved basic services regarding water, sanitation, electricity, waste management, roads and disaster management;

• Creating jobs and sustainable livelihoods through local economic development, utilising co-operatives in every
municipal ward;

• Extending citizens’ democratic participation through a revamped ward committee system;

• Municipalities having sound integrated development plans (IDPs) that will guide all activities within a municipality;

• Building and strengthening the administrative, institutional and financial capabilities of municipalities, with all municipalities aiming to have clean audits
by 2014;

• Creating central co-ordination, support, monitoring and intervention to streamline interaction with other spheres of government;

• Ending corruption, nepotism and maladministration;

• Developing a cohesive governance system and a more equitable intergovernmental fiscal system;

• Developing and strengthening a politically and administratively stable system of local government; and

• Restoring the institutional integrity of municipalities.

It is clear, too, that politics plays a destructive role in the state of affairs in for instance North West province which remains politically unstable even after a damning ministerial report last year blamed political factionalism and patronage for the poor service delivery in local government in the North West.

Last year, the ruling ANC in the province dissolved its provincial structures while an interim structure attempts to rebuild party structures in time for a provincial congress later this year. But the in-fighting and factionalism continues with ongoing dire consequences for governance and service delivery.

In the Western Cape, another example of delivery gone badly wrong due to politics manifested itself recently in the infamous “open toilets saga”.

First, the Democratic Alliance-controlled government of Cape Town erected basic toilets for the people of Makhaza, a Cape Flats township, without enclosing walls and scant regard for the dignity of the people having to use them albeit with the apparent approval of the residents.

Then the ANC Youth League saw an opportunity to gain propaganda mileage out of the affair and led a so-called township protest, in the process vandalising and destroying many of the toilets.

Not to be outdone, the DA mayor Dan Plato next called on the residents of Makhaza to protest and ordered the further destruction of all remaining toilets by city officials.

Here, two competing political organisations tried to outdo each other in headline-grabbing foolishness, once again with the victims being firstly the affected citizens and secondly service delivery and the integrity of local government.

The problems do not end there. While on the one hand provinces and municipalities try to implement the turnaround strategy to improve service delivery, many disillusioned residents on the other hand are becoming impatient and are taking to the streets in protest, often with accompanying violence.

The frustrations that arise from South Africa’s high unemployment rate, particularly among the youth, seem to play a strong role in this.

Youth unemployment in South Africa is hampering economic recovery, with a massive 74% of youth under the age of 24 unable to find work; while 75% of the job losses recorded during the 2009/2010 recession were in respect of people under the age of 34.

With the unemployment rate having risen sharply from 13% in 1994 to the current 25%, and with the youth being the worst affected, it is little wonder that youths are at the forefront of service delivery protests as was seen in the Cape Town toilet saga.