When South Africa reformed in 1994, the majority of citizens in the country expected to see a proactive, progressive and productive government that would effectively deliver for them. Since then the country has undertaken further rounds of elections with people electing a government of their choice. When citizens participate in large numbers in the country’s elections, you can assume they are certain that they are voting for a proactive government that will lead, listen and deliver. When the new government came to power in 1994, we witnessed a major reform in the country’s governance system particularly in the public service; government spheres and departments were extensively resized and reshaped. In the interpretation of some sections in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996) there is an indication that the state should be proactive in providing for its citizens.

To create a more proactive government, a range of legislation was created to allow government to be more proactive. In one of the eight transformation priorities of the White Paper on Transforming Public service delivery, it says “improving service delivery is therefore the ultimate goal of the public service transformation programme” (White Paper on Transforming Public Service Delivery: 1997). Local government, as the closest sphere to the people, faced extensive reforms. This led to the formulation of the White Paper on Transforming Local government which shows that “local government has a critical role to play in rebuilding local communities and environments, as the basis for a democratic, integrated, prosperous and truly non-racial society”. The White Paper talks of “puts forward a vision of a developmental local government, which centers on working with local communities to find sustainable ways to meet their needs and improve the quality of their lives” (White Paper on Transforming Local government: 1998). In addition other pieces of legislation and polices to empower the local government sphere to be more proactive were put in place.

With all the legislation, policies and resources in place, we keep on seeing our local governments around the country reacting to too many preventable crises of service delivery that only needed government to be more proactive. There are a handful municipalities around the country that can be shown to be proactive to communities’ needs. There is a perception that the reactive conduct of local government is exacerbated by the performance of leadership who by-pass legislation, policies and procedures meant to bring good governance in municipalities. This article argues that local government in South Africa is becoming a reactive local government rather than being a proactive local government.

A Reactive Local Government: A Problem?

In every financial year, each municipality is given an opportunity to plan and provide a budget prior to receiving funds from the provincial and national governments. To have a plan supporting the proposed annual budget is a non-negotiated condition to municipalities. The municipal plans that that are used by provincial and national governments to determine what funds to release to local governments are Integrated Developments Plans (IDP) which reflect the communities developmental “wish list”. Surprisingly, with all these plans in place, communities still find themselves ignored by local government. Many municipalities around the country still find themselves stuck with millions of rands unspent at the end of the financial year. In his address at the Gauteng ANC parties’ provincial general council, ANC’s Gauteng chairperson, Mr. Paul Mashatile said, “In a country with such massive developmental backlogs, under spending must be declared a crime against the poor,” (Mail & Guardian on line: 25 June 2011). This under spending by municipalities happens even if there is a continuation of service delivery protests for community dissatisfaction and municipalities can’t claim to have insufficient funds to deliver services to the needy communities.

Although there are claims that not all service delivery protests are genuinely protesting lack of service delivery, there is evidence that majority of the protests are the result of a lack of services that are demanded by communities. Even though there is evidence of poor services and proof of unspent budgets, municipalities react to protests by providing temporary services to the protesting communities or by firing a Mayor or Municipal Manager, while we still see unspent budgets taken back to the treasury at the end of the year.

With all evidence in place, senior officials and politicians in municipalities have a tendency of turning a blind eye on serious problems facing their municipalities. Instead of admitting the challenges they face they all come out with blazing guns defending the crisis in the municipality or being in denial. The billing system has been a major problem in one of the biggest Metros in the country, the City of Johannesburg (CoJ), which the city knew about for years and could have been proactive in dealing with. On the eve of the 2011 local government elections, the CoJ encountered a serious problem with its electricity billing system where some of Johannesburg’s residents were provided with inaccurate electricity bills. With clear evidence of the problem, the former Mayor of the city, Mr. Amos Masondo kept on denying that there was a crisis facing the municipality. Reports show that the Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs had to step in and diffuse the situation (Business Day: 03 March 2011). It is often the found that the provincial or national government has to attend to a crisis where a municipality could have been proactive and dealt with the situation itself. There are number of municipalities in the country that were put under provincial administration as per section 139 of the national constitution. Many of these cases were found to have been the result of failures by the municipalities to be more proactive.

In realising that there is a serious crisis in the running of municipalities and poor performance on service delivery, the national Department of  Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) released the Local Government Turn Around Strategy (LGTAS) in 2009 to defuse the anticipated crisis at local government level. The disparities shown in the LGTAS show that if municipalities were proactive enough they could have prevented such problems. Municipalities were also obliged to come up with their own Local Turn Around Strategies as a new proactive measure to deal with specific local government problems in their jurisdictional area. The President of the country even went to a point of getting into signed performance contracts with municipal Mayors of all municipalities in the country to make them be proactive in their respective municipalities.

Public Participation:

Public participation seems to be another areawhere municipalities are still struggling to grapplewith. Although there are legislated mechanisms for public participation through “invited spaces”, such as Ward Committees (WC), Petitions office, IDP forums, Imbizos and peaceful marches and picketing, these mechanisms seem to be ineffective in bearing any fruits for communities around the country. It has been widely shown in many reports that available and legislatedchannels of participation are not effective, butmunicipalities still point to these mechanismswhen people complain about the lack of attention from municipalities. WC’s and their members have been labelled by some as ineffective and asextensions of the dominant political party in theward that fails to serve their communities.

Communities from around the country are now resorting to their own mechanisms of participation through “invented spaces”; some of which are horrific in nature - but they are meant to get government’s attention. Communities perceive that government reacts to one language only - “the use of violent protest”. In the recent spate of community protests in Zandspruit in the CoJ one community member said, “you see what we have to do to get the government to listen to us?” as pointing to the rubbish and big rocks on the road (Mail & Guardian Online: 30 June 2011). Municipalities who have never experienced violent service delivery protests quickly learn about the consequences of being a reactive municipality rather than  a proactive one, but they still act slowly or ignore any measures they could put in place to prevent the crisis beforehand. Some municipalities are lucky enough to have community surveys done, the results of which help the municipality to pre-empt any crisis they may face, but still they don’t take proactive measures until such crisis happens.

A communication framework in a municipality can be a two way tool that benefits both the municipality and communities. If used effectively communication can be used to pre-empt and at the same time defuse any crisis in the municipality. It can also empower communities to get a better understanding of their municipality. A structured municipal communication framework provides a space for the community and the municipality to address issues in a balanced manner. Some proactive municipalities have adopted community communication strategies as a way to bridge the gap between their communities and the municipality, while in other municipalities still struggle to develop communication strategies. Some believe that communication strategies with communities prolong the implementation route for government projects which are under tight time frames. In some instances communication breakdown has led communities to challenge a municipality in court on issues of service delivery. This shows a failure of the municipality to be proactive as it reacts to court actions brought by the community instead of delivering the required services. Municipalities even brave themselves by challenging court decisions which rule in favour of communities and again spend tax payers’ money to make court appeals.

Conclusion

Since the inception of new local government structure, there are many challenges facing local government. With all legislation and policies in place many municipalities fail to be proactive, they sit and wait until the national or provincial governments come in to intervene to situations. Some of these challenges need proactive local municipalities while some need the provincial and national governments interventions. In some cases the provincial and national governments are dragged into a situation unnecessarily where the municipality itself could have been proactive. Communities get tired of a reactive local government and seek government’s attention through other means - some of which can turn out to be horrifically violent.

References: Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (Act No. 108 of 1996) | White Paper on Transforming Public Service Reform, 1997 | White Paper on Local Government, 1998 | Local Government Turn Around Strategy, 2009 | Mail and Guardian Online - http://mg.co.za/article/2011-06-25underspending-in-municipalities-a-crime-against-humanity | Business Day - http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=133203 | Mail and Guardian Online - http://mg.co.za/article/2011-06-30-zandspruit-burns-again