Pemy Gasela looks at the impact of national interventions on the ground. She concludes there are some successes but more still needs to be done.

A FEW years ago, government launched Project Consolidate, a programme designed to address the underperformance of certain ailing municipalities. In many of these, the situation had become desperate with a complete breakdown in the delivery of services and infighting among municipal officials. As recently as May 2007, however, it was reported that a breakdown in municipal service delivery had led the Department of Provincial and Local Government (DPLG) to stop Treasury fund allocations worth more than R500 million to underperforming municipalities .

At its launch in October 2004 by DPLG, Project Consolidate was presented as a mechanism aimed at injecting new life into local government to address the day-to-day challenges that affect municipalities. It had a broad focus that included the deployment of service delivery facilitators into the targeted municipalities to enhance and reinforce municipal performance and service delivery. The intervention was aimed at promoting a new culture of accountability in municipalities, advancing local economic development, anti-corruption measures, performance monitoring and evaluation, to name a few.

For example, the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan and Buffalo City Municipalities were to receive assistance around the billing system. A team of experts and professionals was deployed to assist municipalities in tackling problems. About three years down the line, it’s perhaps prudent to take stock and determine whether Project Consolidate has delivered on its mandate.

Regrettably, even with the team of experts said to be deployed in these municipalities, there have been cases of impropriety reported in the Nelson Mandela Metro recently. According to The Herald newspaper, the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality has received a damning adverse audit opinion from the Auditor-General for its dismal financial management. The audit stated that poor financial controls had made the municipality a breeding ground for potential fraud.

Some of the issues that were singled out included:

• the supply chain management policy was not complied with;
• tenders were awarded to contractors that did not score the highest points;
• poor record keeping and administration in the human resource business unit;
• control deficiencies in inventory movements and financial statements; and
• insufficient information to verify the BEE status of companies .

This resulted in a situation where transfers of R100 million to metro municipalities were stopped, with R80 million being withdrawn from Nelson Mandela Municipality.

What this implies is that Project Consolidate has not delivered on its mandate. Under-spending remains a persistent problem despite government attempts to help a number of municipalities with capacity building. All this is taking place in spite of serious service backlogs.

But is it possible that Project Consolidate’s problems are a result of lack of capacity and the short-term nature of the project?  It has been argued in some quarters that Project Consolidate could add value to targeted municipalities if there were a long-term transfer of skills and expertise to municipal staff. For instance, it has been pointed out that in some cases, the experts and professionals seconded to municipalities found there were no full-time staff to mentor. As a result, they were forced to do many of the projects by themselves, instead of transferring skills. As a result, local skills and abilities are not being built at local municipal level.

However, despite Project Consolidate failing to capacitate municipalities in terms of skills transfer and financial management, there are some success stories within the 139 identified municipalities.

For example, there have been significant improvements in service delivery covering a range of issues, namely:

• The eradication of the bucket system at Indaka Local Municipality (KZN), Intsika Yethu Local Municipality (EC) and Gert Sibande District Municipality (Mpumalanga);
• The provision of electricity at Umngeni Local Municipality (KZN);
• The provision of water at Abaqulusi Local Municipality (KZN);
• The tarring of roads at King Sabatha Dalindyebo Local Municipality (EC);
• The revamping of the customer care centre at Buffalo City Local Municipality (EC); and
• Effective public participation in Blouberg Local Municipality (Limpopo).

The improvement in sanitation is in line with the government’s target to eradicate the bucket system in all areas serviced by municipalities by the end of this year. In Intsika Yethu Local Municipality, for instance, government has largely been successful in eradicating this dehumanising sanitation system.

To solve the problem, government started by conducting surveys, to determine the extent of the problem and identify possible solutions. Following the surveys, the municipality decided that digesters would be the best affordable route to go. Households were connected via digesters to the main sewerage line, and top structures were built to house the digesters. Of significance here was the use of local labour, which transferred skills to the local level. The project is said to be 100 percent complete, with R2,3 spent out of the R2,8 million that was allocated . The success of this project illustrates the impact community participation has on service delivery. Concerted efforts between communities and their municipalities can help speed up service delivery.

Another success story is that of the Gert Sibande District Municipality, formerly known as Eastvaal, one of the three district municipalities in Mpumalanga. Prior to the project, the municipality was plagued by poor sanitation and provincial and municipal research showed there were 13 000 households using the bucket system. A large-scale toilet building project was developed for a three-phase implementation: the first phase of  4 228 units in Dipaliseng, Albert Luthuli, Lekwas, Msukaligwa, Pixley ka Seme and Nkanini; the second phase of 5 140 units in the Govan Mbeki Municipality and the last phase of 3 383 units in Embalenhle in the Govan Mbeki Municipality . Remarkable progress has been made with 99 percent of the targeted number of toilets completed. This success was achieved by effective co-operation between different government departments, showing that inter-governmental relations are important for a project’s successful completion. Most importantly, people now have proper sanitation – services have been delivered. There have indeed been instances across the country where various projects suffered because the state departments couldn’t work together.

Although Project Consolidate has not delivered on its entire mandate, some successes have made a real and quantifiable difference to the quality of people’s lives on the ground.

These success stories should be used as the catalyst which ensures the challenges of good governance and improved service delivery are better understood at local level.

The Local Government Transformer Vol. 13 No. 3 Jun/Jul 2007