The May municipal elections set a few new records {writer: Stef Terblanche}

If anything, the local government elections of 18 May represented something of a major turning point in the sphere of local government. Not only did it deliver many ‘firsts’ and break a number of records, but it also signalled a number of changes as well as programmes aimed at improving local government and service delivery.

The importance of these local elections can never be questioned, as the chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) Dr Brigalia Bam pointed out shortly before the 2011 elections.

“The outcome of local elections will determine many things that citizens tend to take for granted. Local taxes, maintenance of streets, funding for city projects and occasionally the reputation of a city all depend upon the election of mayors, representatives and council members,” she said at the time.

“We urge all South Africans to participate in the election to further strengthen and localise our democracy.”

In the end, the African National Congress (ANC) won 63.65% of all votes brought out; the Democratic Alliance won 21.97% of the vote; the Inkatha Freedom Party won 3.94% of the vote; the Congress of the People 2.33%; and the new National Freedom Party won 2.58% of the votes brought out. The remaining 116 political parties each secured less than 1% of the vote.

Excellent turnout

Some impressive statistics emerged from the elections.

Firstly, all expectations were surpassed when 57.6% of registered voters cast their votes around the country – the highest turnout yet for local government elections in South Africa. That translates into 13 664 914 people who cast 27 181 857 votes for ward and proportional representation (PR) candidates. If the PR votes cast for district councils are added, a total of 35 235 914 votes were cast.

Voters elected a total of 9 090 councillors in 278 municipalities from a list of 53 596 candidates. Of these councillors, 4 813 came from the PR candidate lists of political parties, while 4 277 were directly elected ward candidates. Out of the total number of councillors elected, 55% are new councillors.

Based on these figures, there are on average 32.7 councillors per municipality.

In practice, however, the picture is very different, as some councils are far bigger and others are much smaller.

The 53 596 candidates in this election – 29 570 party ward candidates and 23 278 party proportional list candidates – represented the highest number of candidates to date contesting local government elections in South Africa.

In 2006 and 2000, the number of candidates was 45 179 and 30 477 respectively.

The number of independent ward candidates increased from 667 in 2006 to 754 in 2011. In the 2011 elections, a total of 121 political parties participated, while the number of parties in 2006 was 97 and in 2000 it was 79.

After the elections, IEC chief electoral officer Advocate Pansy Tlakula thanked South Africans for embracing democracy.

”We have always maintained that voter apathy is not a feature in our dynamic democracy,” she said. “Not only is the voter turnout for these elections higher than we had for the last municipal elections in 2006, but they are also the highest that we have had in the history of democratic municipal elections in this country; we have broken an international trend where elections, and local government elections in particular, progressively produce a lower voter turnout.

“Our target was to reach a 40% voter turnout. I am pleased to announce that the voter turnout for the 2011 municipal elections was 57.6%. I wish to applaud all South Africans who came out in their numbers to cast their votes on 18 May 2011.

“Irrespective of who won the elections, our democracy has grown and matured further,” added Adv. Tlakula.

The cost

According to the IEC’s deputy chief electoral officer Norman du Plessis, the budget of the IEC for the 2011 local government elections was R1.2 billion, or R87.82 per voter, or R34.06 per vote cast, or R4 316 546 per municipality – enough to bankrupt some municipalities.

The total budget for the first democratic elections in 1994 was R963 million.

Du Plessis said shortly before the 2011 elections that if inflationary cost increases over the past 17 years were factored in, the budget for 2011 was relatively low compared to 1994. The cost of elections per vote “has dramatically reduced”, he added.

According to Dr Bam, 17 months of planning and six months of procurement went into the elections, which were held for 226 local councils, 44 district councils and eight metro councils – or 278 elections, one per council.

A total of 221 610 ballot boxes at 20 859 voting stations, manned by more than 100 000 volunteers, were used.

Furthermore, 118  770 voting compartments, 58 240 stationery packs (61 tonnes of stationery), 41 718 banners, 20 859 zip-zip scanners, 23 000 templates for Braille votes, 20 859 maps of voting districts, 1 042 950 paper clips, 200 859 ballpoint pens, 41 718 refuse bags, 20 859 calculators and 237 warehouses to store voting material were used for the 2011 election.

Winning acclaim

For its use of modern technology to ensure the smooth and corruption-free running of the 2011 local government elections, the IEC has again won international acclaim.

In June, Dr Bam, Adv. Tlakula and IEC deputy chairperson Thoko Mpumlwana travelled to Tanzania where they received the United Nations Public Service Award for “Preventing and Combating Corruption in the Public Service”.

The award was for the IEC’s use of modern technology in the elections: South Africa came first in the competition for its innovative use of results slip scanning.

A total of 36 public organisations worldwide received this prestigious award on UN Public Service Day.

“Transparency is especially important to the IEC in ensuring that votes captured in the electronic results system can be easily verified against the votes as reflected in the results slip signed by the presiding officers and political party representatives in each voting station,” said Dr Bam.

Once the votes have been counted, the results are entered onto the results slips, which are signed by the presiding officers and political party representatives in each voting station.

From there, they are taken to the municipal electoral offices where the results slips are scanned before being verified by independent auditors.

The IEC introduced the process of scanning results slips during the 2009 national and provincial elections.

It believes the benefits arising from results slip scanning include complete process transparency to all users; improved legitimacy and acceptability of election results; improved accuracy and efficiency of the audit process; providing minimal impact on the parallel business processes; and scanned electronic copies of all result slips will be preserved for far longer than paper copies.

“The United Nations Public Service Awards is the most prestigious international recognition of excellence in public service,” says Dr Bam.

In November 2010, the IEC received an award from the Centre for Public Sector Innovation for its “innovative use of information communication technology for effective service delivery” for this process; and in May 2011, it was the first runner-up at the All Africa Public Sector Innovation Awards held in Kenya, in the category “Innovative Service Delivery Improvements”.

A turning point

The 2011 municipal elections have marked a number of turning points and changes in the local government sphere.

Two days before the municipal elections, Deputy Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Yunus Carrim indicated that a major overhaul of local government structures and powers was imminent. New legislation was being prepared, which would seek to link the powers of municipalities and increased funding to their capacity and ability to deliver services.

Draft legislation in the form of the Monitoring, Support and Intervention Bill would seek to strengthen the crucial role of provincial and national government in monitoring and assisting municipalities to be more effective without infringing on their powers.

Carrim indicated that funding for municipalities, which are currently allocated only 8.7% of national revenue, will be increased as well.

President Jacob Zuma has signed into law the Municipal Systems Amendment Bill, which seeks to depoliticise municipal bureaucratic administration and to ensure provincial and local governments appoint skilled and qualified people. But his signing off of the legislation has angered municipal workers who, at the time of writing, had threatened large-scale disruptive action.

The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) said President Zuma had reneged on a promise he had made to the union before the recent municipal elections, that he would discuss the legislation with the union before signing it into being.

Samwu was objecting to two clauses: the prohibition of senior party office-bearers from also holding top municipal jobs – aimed at ensuring municipalities are managed by people with the right skills, rather than people who are politically well-connected; and a provision that requires the South African Local Government Association to consult the minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, the Financial and Fiscal Commission and “any other parties as may be prescribed” before entering into salary negotiations.

Samwu says the latter clause will give unlimited power to the minister, to veto decisions in respect of wage negotiations. This law could impact particularly on the position of municipal managers.

Elroy Africa, director-general in the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, recently said at a conference of the Institute for Local Government Management (iLGM) in Durban that most municipal managers’ contracts needed to be reviewed in line with the quest for more professionalism in local government.

He said municipal managers needed to strengthen their implementation capabilities in order to meet the criteria of the government’s municipal turnaround strategy. According to Africa, they needed to approach service delivery like project managers, allowing for “a cross-pollination of government capabilities” on projects.

With 55% of the recently elected councillors being new councillors, there may be a strong political motivation for the removal of many municipal managers and other officials. For sake of continuity and efficiency in local government, however, Deputy Minister Carrim has appealed to these newly elected councillors not to arbitrarily dismiss senior managers who were appointed by previous councillors.

He told the iLGM conference that while there had been a change of councillors at political level, it was important that senior managers remain in their jobs to avoid instability in municipalities. Managers play a pivotal role in driving the administration of municipalities, and that councillors and political parties crucially contributed to the stability and productivity of senior municipal managers.

With a majority of councillors starting to serve their first term in local government, there was a strong need to retain effective senior managers who would ensure stability and continuity in the administration, Carrim said.

He added that the Municipal Finance Management Act had set a target to ensure all senior managers have adequate qualifications, skills and experience by the end of December 2012, and that the unnecessary removal of senior managers would undermine the achievement of that target.

Service delivery protests

The high voter turnout in the local government elections has been widely interpreted as a demonstration by the public that it expects better service delivery from the municipalities.

The elections were preceded by several years of damning auditor-general reports for municipalities as well as escalating service delivery protests around the country.

However, Municipal IQ, a specialised local government data and intelligence service that has been monitoring service delivery protests since 2004, said there had been a significant fall in the number of service delivery protests this year up to the local government elections.

Karen Heese, economist at Municipal IQ, noted that “protests captured on Municipal IQ’s Hotspots Monitor for 2011 represent only 7% of protests reflected between 2004 and 2011”, and that there had been a dip in the gradual upward trend of earlier this year.

However, there seems to have been somewhat of an escalation of protests in municipalities after the elections of 18 May, most of these being related to a pre-election promise made by President Zuma that councillors whose names had been added to the ANC’s election candidates lists irregularly and against the will of local ANC branches and communities, would be removed after the elections.

Although the ANC had appointed a task team to look into this matter, no action has yet been taken, and some communities seem to have become impatient.

Removing councillors could expose the ANC party and the government to a number of possible negative developments such as Constitutional and Labour Court cases instituted by those being removed.

Legal experts have been arguing that neither President Zuma nor the ANC nor the government may actually have the power to remove councillors once they have been elected, and to replace them with other councillors. These councillors can only be removed in accordance with the rules of the electoral system, which could well prevent such action being taken.

That would probably lead to more protest actions in affected communities while organisations such as the Congress of South African Trade Unions may also protest.

But should there be a large-scale removal of councillors, it would necessitate the holding of a series of by-elections amounting possibly to another mini-local government election – at great cost and with much disruption for effective local government.