Is local government making the grade? {writer: David Christianson}

Now that the dust has settled on last year’s local government election, we can reflect on some of the deeper implications it holds for municipal and national governance in South Africa.

One central theme appears: The election focused on service delivery, with the two main contenders, the ANC and the Democratic Alliance, both claiming the best track record in that regard. Despite both campaigns’ Pythonesque emphasis on latrines, the matter is clearly a serious one in South African politics.

But it has to be suggested that the term “delivery” and the systemic implications thereof have not been adequately explored.

Service delivery is the responsibilty of local municipalities. Since the restructuring of local government in 1999, the huge reduction in the number of municipalities, and the passing of a battery of legislation over the following couple of years, South Africa has a system that is officially referred to as “developmental” local government.

In practice, this means a greater focus on service delivery: water reticulation, electricity, sanitation, municipal roads and refuse removal. These services are administered locally and funded primarily by central government grants, to the value of some R50 billion in 2009/10.

According to conventional wisdom, the stability of South Africa’s relatively new democracy hinges on successful service delivery. Service protests are often viewed as evidence that delivery has failed and, consequently, that the government’s delivery approach needs to be overhauled. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that this is a very limited view to take.

What seems more likely is that service delivery protests have become a South African institution. Most of the 107 major protest incidents recorded by Municipal IQ in 2010 took place in Gauteng and the Western Cape – the provinces with the best service delivery track records.

It must be acknowledged that while much local governance looks somewhat tatty and that, in perhaps 30 localities, it has failed utterly, service delivery is functioning well in the rest. According to official figures from half a dozen reliable sources, service delivery has steadily improved over the past five years.

Between 2006 and 2009, one million new households received free water and sanitation, bringing the total number of househoulds in this category to 11 million. The proportion of households living in a formal dwelling has increased by 4.2 million (73%) since 1996.

Clientelism

It has become obvious that service delivery protests are usually not driven by people who have the greatest need for it. It is often where conditions are improving that protestors can be found – attempting to jump the queue by marching, waving banners, burning tyres and throwing stones.

In its defence, protests are a way in which delivery demands can be brought to the attention of those who control the purse strings. Nor is it ineffective, from the perspective of the protestors, for it often produces the goods. But it often has troubling implications.

The term that best describes the current system is “clientelist”; new delivery in South Africa mostly happens through clientelist relationships.

Clientelism was once understood to be a system in which patrons or local ‘big men’ appropriated public goods for their local constituencies in return for political support. This original definition revolved around the relationships between large-scale landowners and peasants in Latin America. Over the past 30 years, the definition of clientelism has been extended to cover situations where the landowner is effectively replaced by a political party. In many developing countries, the ruling party effectively becomes the patron while those who vote for it become its clients.

This is indeed the way the ANC tends to operate at a local level. But is that not how politics always works? Do individuals not, in all systems, vote for political parties that ensure a constant flow of public goods, financed by the taxpayer, to loyal constituents? Perhaps, at a certain level.

But what distinguishes clientelism is its ad-hoc nature and relative disempowerment of voters. Clientelism may seem viable – some public goods get delivered – but it is, in fact, severely dysfunctional. The need to maintain the system is subordinated to short-term delivery. Its output is implicitly partisan; only by voting for the patron party can individuals receive access to service delivery.

In clientelism, delivery and protest are elements of the same system. Protest is seen as the best means to access public goods. In fact, in areas where delivery is seen to be occurring, for those who have been marginalised it serves as an incentive to stand up.

What alternatives to clientelism exist? The most prominent alternative is a legal, rational and programmatic delivery system. In such a system, the delivery of public goods is planned, trade-offs are taken into account, maintenance is factored in and the ever pressing demands of the poor are managed through a representative, democratic and transparent political system.

Systemic implications

From the perspective of the poorer voters, clientelism seems to work; but for the overall system, its long-term implications are baleful.

Clientelism is simply a way to buy off protest. Development as a response to popular protest was a policy exemplified by the late apartheid regime during the era of the Tricameral Constitution.

In the 1980s, black local authorities, regional services councils and administration boards poured resources into the townships in a vain attempt to distract protestors who were demanding political rights. While current protests also include demands for political rights, the prevalence of clientelism suggests that those rights are formal rather than substantive.

Where delivery is clientelist, a more virtuous form of politics is unable to develop. Virtuous politics is about mutual understanding and restraint between municipalities and their constituents. It is about the pursuit of policies that enhance the common good in the locality. Virtuous politics can develop only if local and national government starts treating taxpayers like citizens, not like clients.

If the systems of virtuous politics do not develop and, with time, become the way things are done, service delivery will remain short-term, ad hoc and prone to violent disruption. And, as the Latin American adage has it, “clients can never be citizens.”

Differences between the ANC and DA

This perspective goes some way toward explaining the differing delivery claims of the ANC and DA during the 2011 municipal elections: The ANC essentially offered clientelist service delivery, with all the limitations of such a system. The DA, on the other hand, believes it can offer an equal volume of delivery but, according to its literature, it wants to do so through legal, rational and programmatic governance – which will not only be more efficient, but also reduce waste and opportunities for corruption.

But such a commitment may cost the DA short-term political support in local government since, as we have seen in South Africa during the past five years, clientelism does deliver the goods, albeit less sustainably than its programmatic alternative.

The ANC, on the other hand, can bolster its position by opening the national fiscal tap. Essentially, we are witnessing a clash between the idea of good government and the provision of gifts to silence mass protest.

This article was published with the assistance of the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung für die Freiheit (FNF). The views presented in the article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the FNF.