The level of incessant financial difficulties in these municipalities is serious: characterised by unfunded budgets, huge budget deficits, persistent power cut threats from Eskom, infrastructure and service delivery backlogs.
Nkosikhulule Nyembezi
CAPE TOWN – The retention under provincial government administration of over 29 struggling municipalities nationwide now clearly heralds a deep-seated crisis.
The level of incessant financial difficulties in these municipalities is serious: characterised by unfunded budgets, huge budget deficits, persistent power cut threats from Eskom, infrastructure and service delivery backlogs.
Even the ANC NEC lekgotla held on January 22–23 recognised the seriousness of the situation and has decided to set up a Special Service Delivery cluster, or another appropriate institutional arrangement, to improve overall service delivery in areas such as housing, water and sanitation “in direct response to community concerns about the poor state of this critical infrastructure across several municipalities,” said ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Its seriousness was comprehensively stated in a report prepared last August for Parliament’s portfolio committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) which placed the country’s municipalities into four main sliding risk categories.
Using these metrics, 64 municipalities (24.9%) are high-risk and dysfunctional, while 111 municipalities are medium-risk.
By comparison, only 16 municipalities (5.45%) are stable – with the vast majority of these municipalities located in the Western Cape.
The provocation to citizens, whose quality of life is blighted by these deficiencies, is grotesque. But the political will to change the situation will remain lukewarm as long as nothing on the ground poses any strategic threat to politicians responsible for the perpetuating of incompetence and corruption of decision-makers at both the levels of elected representatives and civil servants or even a threat to SA’s electoral system as a whole.
While public expectations were low last year, few thought the picture would remain discouragingly unchanged nearly three months after the elections, given the manifesto promises to prioritise the risk mitigation process.
The KwaZulu-Natal provincial government announced last week its decision to retain eight of the province’s struggling municipalities under provincial administration until 30 April as “it was in the municipalities’ best interests to extend all current interventions, and to enable them to continue receiving support from the entirety of government.”
Other provinces are expected to retain the administration until June.
So grotesque is citizen provocation that the Human Rights Commission (HRC) CEO Tseliso Thipanyane remarked, during a webinar by the HRC and the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent on local government service delivery through infrastructure development and management, that from the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) reports over the past five years, it is evident that more than 100 municipalities did not submit periodic reports to the commission.
This failure also points to serious incompetency and corruption.
Intergovernmental relations in South Africa have been fraught since the dawn of democracy in 1994 when our country was proclaimed as one sovereign, democratic state founded on the values of a multi-party system of democratic government to ensure accountability, responsiveness, and openness.
The country is split each time incompetent and corrupt politicians abuse financial and administrative powers and functions that are meant to promote the distinctive, interdependent and interrelated characteristics of local and other spheres of government.
The split is fuelled by increasing poverty and inequality, as well as the uneven provision of basic services to citizens of a one, sovereign, and democratic state.
The weakening of long-standing ties between the people and politicians at national, provincial and local spheres of government have been one of many reasons why the people in cross-border municipalities such as Merafong, Matatiele, Bushbuckridge, and Vhembe have over the years voted against the ANC to move provincial boundaries to enable them to be governed differently.
The strain on these ties has also recently produced independent candidates and over 66 coalition municipalities.
The concept of spheres of interest and competence in cooperative government, regions where the interests and competencies of one sphere of government are more important than the interests and competencies of another, has always been controversial in our democracy because of the ever-present threat of abuse.
Fortunately, our courts have diligently developed the constitutional doctrine of such spheres in recognition of the reality that they are potent and all too real.
They are indispensable features of our constitutional democracy, designed to make strong local governments that are not a mere extension of provincial governments.
Each time the topic of struggling municipalities comes up, strategists of spheres of influence are left with the facts of geography, statistics, and of crude exploitation of political power by incompetent and corruption of politicians.
While the Auditor-General’s office has been diligently extending its reach into the financial and administrative competencies of local governments, the improvements are yet to reach a critical mass before citizens’ needs are met.
Some politicians and political analysts object to the retention of administrative control of struggling municipalities by the provincial governments, but it is hard to see what gains are achieved by not encouraging the rare display of the ANC’s political will to address fundamentals.
The reality is that in an environment where party factionalism is rife, the provincial governments took a calculated gamble in putting struggling municipalities under administration in the first place and in retaining them in the second place.
Section 139 of the Constitution authorises the provincial executive to intervene in a municipality when it does not fulfil its executive obligation in terms of legislation.
Without this recourse, the deficiencies in municipalities almost guaranteed there would be a chauvinist reflex.
At that point, the realpolitik of power comes on stage. The South African Local Government Association would have no part in intervening. Nor would the Public Protector, the HRC and the Auditor-General have the necessary troops.
They have the threat of legislative intervention powers, but without financial and administrative support of elected public representatives and civil servants, these powers merely sow destruction.
The root of financial and administrative stability in these crises lies in strength, strength to keep everything in proportion and to see a way through the restoration of functional local governments.
The risk is always that curse of history: when hostilities and incompetencies turn to a crisis, usurp of power by provincial governments can seem the simplest, most glorious way forward.
Nyembezi is a human rights activists and policy analyst
Cape Times
