Municipal Mayor’s performance agreements: panacea to local government challenges?
> Malachia Mathoho
South Africa as a country has a non-verbal system of holding those in power to account. If our soccer team fails, we consider firing the coach, if our rugby team fails to bring the world cup home, we consider letting the coach go, and if our municipalities fail to perform we consider letting the Mayor go. This is good in a democracy; it speaks to the level of accountability and maturity. But there are many issues that are to be considered when looking at the performance monitoring of Municipal Mayors.
This article aims to highlight some of the challenges that local government is facing and argues that whilst it is important to hold Municipal Mayors to account, their performance should be judged fairly and that they should be supported well to perform their duties. The article further argues that currently, there are no visible ingredients in local government to properly support, equip municipalities for excellence enough to fairly judge the performance of Municipal Mayors, starting from the fact that their qualifications are hardly at the level at which they perhaps should considering the technical expertise required for such a position.
Over some time now the country has witnessed a spate of community service delivery grievances testifying to the growing dissatisfaction of citizens with local municipalities. In relation to municipal performance, the Auditor General in its report (2009/10) indicated that out of 283 municipalities, only seven municipalities received financially unqualified audit reports (meaning no irregular findings on either predetermined objectives or compliance with laws and regulations - in turn implying a clean administration). The level of non-compliance with laws and regulations applicable to municipalities and municipal entities is an area of concern. The financial year under review saw an increase in the number of municipalities found to have contravened laws and legislation (Auditor General South Africa report (2009/10). Municipal Mayors and other executive officials at the municipal level came under the spotlight for some of the failures in municipalities.
While the basic premise of local government is that "Local Government is everyone's business", in contrast, the Municipal Mayors who found themselves in the middle of local government's poor performance became casualties of the ruling party's wrath, and faced the boot from the municipal echelons. Most recently, after an official inauguration, Mayors had to sign performance agreements to commit themselves to performing well. This article argues that mayors' performance agreements are not to be the only way out of the municipal woes and that various aspects towards the achievement of a developmental local government and good local governance are to be considered.
Persistent challenges in local municipalities
The State of Local Government in South Africa: an Overview Report (2009) shows that although many support programmes for local government have been put in place to assist in specific ways, it is still clear that a number of stubborn service delivery and governance problems that have been identified in municipalities over a number of years persist. These remain consistently at the forefront of government's developmental challenges and some of these problems were also highlighted in the Auditor General report (2009/10). The priority areas identified include:
Huge service delivery and backlog challenges, e.g. housing, water and sanitation;
Poor communication and accountability relationships with communities;
Problems with the political administrative interface;
Corruption and fraud;
Poor financial management, e.g. negative audit opinions;
Number of (violent) service delivery protests;
Weak civil society formations;
Intra - and inter-political party issues negatively affecting governance and delivery; and
Insufficient municipal capacity due to lack of scarce skills (The State of Local Government in South Africa: an Overview Report, 2009)
The State of Local Government report also shows that in seeking to answer the question of why local government performance outcomes have been so disappointing, the national government begun to do things differently. The Constitution, the White Paper on Local Government and the rest of the rest of the other legislation relating to local government provide municipalities with a structure to manage their administration. The report also outlines political decision-making systems, and defines principles for structuring administrations.
Municipal Mayors and municipal performance
While municipalities' woes continue to rip communities apart, Municipal Mayors as political heads of municipalities find themselves in the spotlight. Legislatively, a Mayor is a political head of a municipality and is accountable for the overall performance of that particular municipality.
When municipalities fail to deliver, all eyes turn to the Mayor. Mayors are often caught in the middle of many of the following challenges highlighted in the State of Local Government report:
tensions between the political and administrative interface;
poor ability of many councillors to deal with the demands of local government;
insufficient separation of powers between political parties and municipal councils;
lack of clear separation between the legislative and executive;
inadequate accountability measures and support systems and resources for local democracy; and
poor compliance with the legislative and regulatory frameworks for municipalities.
Mayors were fingered again by the Auditor General's report which stated that, "Mayors and Municipal Managers must set an example by consistently executing their legislated duties and then ensuring that compliance oriented control environments exist within municipalities and municipal entities" (Auditor General South Africa (2009/10).
The Auditor General's report continues to highlight Mayors' failures to meet some of their legislative responsibilities, such as:
Coordinating the annual revision of the Integrated Development Plan and coordinating the preparation of the annual budget;
Determining how the Integrated Development Plan was to be taken into account or revised for the purposes of the annual budget;
Tabling the annual budget at a council meeting at least 90 days before the start of the budget year;
Ensuring that the council approves the municipality's service delivery and budget implementation plan within 28 days after the approval of the annual budget;
Supervising budgetary control and early identification of financial problems. (Auditor General South Africa (2009/10).
The State of Local Government report (2009) indicates that the effective functioning of a municipality begins with its political leadership. In respect to governance the overarching question during the assessment process centred on the effectiveness, capability and integrity of the local political council leadership, with the mayor being part of this leadership.
After launching the Local Government Turnaround Strategy (2009), the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs summoned all Municipal Mayors and local government MECs in October 2010 to demonstrate their commitment to the strategy by signing service delivery performance agreements.
The level of non-compliance with laws and regulations applicable to municipalities and municipal entities is an area of concern.
The minister proudly said, "Today we are part of real history in the making. For the first time the country will witness the signing ceremony between myself, and the MECs for Local Government (LG) and between the MECs and the Mayors of the Delivery Agreement on Outcome 9. This signing constitutes our public commitment to create a responsive, accountable, effective and efficient Local Government (LG)".
The signing of this agreement with the minister came on the eve of 2011 Local Government elections which was also six months before the end of Mayors' terms in office. An official term of a Mayor in the office is equal to the local government period which is five years; and so these Mayors were made to sign performance agreements six months before the end of their terms. The whole idea of signing these agreements was questionable as the timing was bad, some were not even sure if they were to make it in the next round of elections, leaving the signing of the performance agreement as a media parade rather than a genuine performance monitoring issue and a service delivery concern.
The signing of performance agreements continued after the 2011 Local Government elections in various provinces. During the signing of these performance agreements, in the Eastern Cape Province the MEC for Local Government and Traditional Affairs Mr. Mlibo Qoboshiyane said, "Zero tolerance for complacency, incompetence and excuses in service delivery is going to be exercised in the Eastern Cape". It is clear that there is a move to bring into effect the oath that Mayors take when they are inaugurated that they would honestly and diligently serve their communities through the signing of these performance agreements.
Beyond the Mayors' control
While Mayors face scrutiny after municipal failures, there are many issues which are beyond their control which need to be weighed and compared with their line of accountability. Sections 154 (1) and 155 (6) and (7) of the Constitution, mandate the provincial government with the obligation to supervise, monitor and support local government. The provincial sphere can intervene in a municipality within its jurisdiction in terms of section 139 of the Constitution if the situation calls for that. The State of Local Government report shows that the last decade of local government was marred by poor performance, with only about 30 municipalities having experienced an intervention from provinces. The report said that "it has shown that the mechanisms in place were not well-supported by national government or sufficiently institutionalised, due to the absence of post-intervention measurement of improvement, and the weak application of intergovernmental checks and balances, i.e. the oversight and review process by the Minister, the NCOP and the Provincial Legislatures" (State of Local Government report (2009)).
A few Mayors were sacked on the spot as their municipalities experienced service delivery protests and rated as underperforming. In September 2009, the Thaba Chweu municipality's executive Mayor, Mrs. Clara Ndlovu in Mpumalanga Province, was sacked following two months of service delivery protests. In Standerton - a Lekwa Municipality Mayor Mrs. Juliet Radebe-Khumalo also in Mpumalanga Province became a casualty.
A few Mayors were sacked on the spot as their municipalities experienced service delivery protests and rated as underperforming.
The ANC, led by Julius Malema and Fikile Mbalula visited the municipality and saw to the sacking of a mayor for poor service delivery in October 2009.
1http://www.thenewage.co.za/Detail.aspx?news_id=25884&cat_id=1016
By signing the performance agreements some Mayors found themselves victims of political wars.
Is this proving to be a solution?
Looking at the examples cited above, the question remains, did the sacking of Mayors resolve the service delivery problems in these municipalities? Our research reveals that the answer is no, the challenges still persist because they were not necessarily hinged on the performance of the Mayors per se, but a whole host of other challenges far beyond the Mayor's control. Yes, it is good to have performance monitoring tools for the Mayors and in turn be able to measure the performance of municipalities, and yes, service delivery should be at the centre of this monitoring system, but so much more ought to be considered.
For starters, local government business is highly technical and complicated, the system of local government confuses even the people who are in it, yet, there is no minimum education qualification demand for election as a Mayor. Yet, we expect these people to miraculously turn the socio-economic tide at a local level around. There are challenges relating to separation of powers between the party and the municipal administration where Mayors are expected to tow the party lines at all costs, internal disputes and conflicts and staff performance and moral, the bigger factional issues at party level which in turn impact on municipal councils and relations at that level to name but a few and these are not within the control of the Mayor.
By signing the performance agreements some Mayors found themselves victims of political wars. Our research revealed that some ex-Mayors expressed dissatisfaction with the manner (publicity) in which the performance agreements signing was done, its timing and the fact that it was highly political (more for point scoring) as opposed to having the genuine interest of the community at heart and how they fell victims of bigger political agendas through the process.
The State of Local Government report (2009) identifies the three most common failures of local governance as:
1. Governance: Political infighting, conflict between senior management and councillors and human resource management issues.
2. Financial: Inadequate revenue collection, ineffective financial systems, fraud, misuse of municipal assets and funds.
3. Service delivery: Breach of sections 152 and 153 of the Constitution which outline service delivery obligations of municipalities. (State of Local Government report 2009)
If these three factors are carefully looked at, they have issues that are beyond Municipal Mayors' control. Since the country held the local government elections in May 2011 some municipalities are still struggling to establish ward committees and this is due to political rifts in the ruling political parties that are taking the lead in the unsuccessful establishment of ward committees.
Although legislatively, ward committees are not supposed to be politically biased, they are being hijacked by local politics and politicians who need to secure or strengthen their political base and in some instances Mayors do not have control over this.
While the State of Local Governance report indicates that the national government has allocated hugely significant sums of money to building municipal capacity over the years, the reality is in contrast to this. The National and Provincial governments departments are blamed that they owe municipalities billions of rand in terms of water and rental bills, and in turn, they accuse municipalities of inadequately collecting revenues and breaching the constitution by providing poor services to communities.
Conclusion
Local government is the closest sphere of government to local citizens. Since the establishment of local government, the sphere has always been confronted by many challenges; some need discipline from within local government itself, while others are beyond the control of local government. Many remedies have been sought in the past, including interventions by provinces in some cases, production of ambitious turn around strategies, Siyenza Manje, Project Consolidate and others, and recently, the sacking of ‘ill-performing" mayors. While developing systems to hold mayors to account is important, it is crucial that they do not find themselves casualties of a system that never supported them to thrive in the first instance.
There needs to be first and foremost consideration of the technical expertise required to manoeuvre through some of the technical documents presented at council, being able to ask the right questions from the officials, being able to represent the municipality well and attract investors, demanding a certain quality and standard of output from officials, etc. It takes a certain calibre of an individual to be able to achieve this. The truth of the matter is that one is able to think and lead as far as their education is able to carry them and beyond that they are limited. Forcing these people to commit to effective delivery of services when they do not even know what the basic delivery standards are and how these ought to translate to the performance agreements of the municipal officials is more like shooting through the dark. And therefore, much as we are in agreement with the ruling party that performance monitoring is key and that municipal mayors should be held accountable, we should be devising various other means of ensuring excellence at local government level at all times.
References: Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (Act No. 108 of 1996) | Auditor General South Africa, Consolidated General Report on the local government audit outcomes, 2009-10 | Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. State of Local Government in South Africa: Overviews Report. National State of Local Government Assessments. Working Documents. 2009. } Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. Local Government Turnaround Strategy, November 2009 http://www.thenewage.co.za/Detail.aspx?news_id=25884&cat_id=1016 | http://www.info.gov.za/speech/DynamicAction?pageid=461&sid=13386&tid=20844 | http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/sowetan/archive/2009/09/03/mayor-is-fired-aftermashishing- protests | http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/Standerton-mayoral-council-fired-20091021
2http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/Standerton-mayoral-council-fired-20091021
South Africa as a country has a non-verbal system of holding those in power to account. If our soccer team fails, we consider firing the coach, if our rugby team fails to bring the world cup home, we consider letting the coach go, and if our municipalities fail to perform we consider letting the Mayor go. This is good in a democracy; it speaks to the level of accountability and maturity. But there are many issues that are to be considered when looking at the performance monitoring of Municipal Mayors.
This article aims to highlight some of the challenges that local government is facing and argues that whilst it is important to hold Municipal Mayors to account, their performance should be judged fairly and that they should be supported well to perform their duties. The article further argues that currently, there are no visible ingredients in local government to properly support, equip municipalities for excellence enough to fairly judge the performance of Municipal Mayors, starting from the fact that their qualifications are hardly at the level at which they perhaps should considering the technical expertise required for such a position.
Over some time now the country has witnessed a spate of community service delivery grievances testifying to the growing dissatisfaction of citizens with local municipalities. In relation to municipal performance, the Auditor General in its report (2009/10) indicated that out of 283 municipalities, only seven municipalities received financially unqualified audit reports (meaning no irregular findings on either predetermined objectives or compliance with laws and regulations - in turn implying a clean administration). The level of non-compliance with laws and regulations applicable to municipalities and municipal entities is an area of concern. The financial year under review saw an increase in the number of municipalities found to have contravened laws and legislation (Auditor General South Africa report (2009/10). Municipal Mayors and other executive officials at the municipal level came under the spotlight for some of the failures in municipalities.
While the basic premise of local government is that "Local Government is everyone's business", in contrast, the Municipal Mayors who found themselves in the middle of local government's poor performance became casualties of the ruling party's wrath, and faced the boot from the municipal echelons. Most recently, after an official inauguration, Mayors had to sign performance agreements to commit themselves to performing well. This article argues that mayors' performance agreements are not to be the only way out of the municipal woes and that various aspects towards the achievement of a developmental local government and good local governance are to be considered.
Persistent challenges in local municipalities
The State of Local Government in South Africa: an Overview Report (2009) shows that although many support programmes for local government have been put in place to assist in specific ways, it is still clear that a number of stubborn service delivery and governance problems that have been identified in municipalities over a number of years persist. These remain consistently at the forefront of government's developmental challenges and some of these problems were also highlighted in the Auditor General report (2009/10). The priority areas identified include:
Huge service delivery and backlog challenges, e.g. housing, water and sanitation;
Poor communication and accountability relationships with communities;
Problems with the political administrative interface;
Corruption and fraud;
Poor financial management, e.g. negative audit opinions;
Number of (violent) service delivery protests;
Weak civil society formations;
Intra - and inter-political party issues negatively affecting governance and delivery; and
Insufficient municipal capacity due to lack of scarce skills (The State of Local Government in South Africa: an Overview Report, 2009)
The State of Local Government report also shows that in seeking to answer the question of why local government performance outcomes have been so disappointing, the national government begun to do things differently. The Constitution, the White Paper on Local Government and the rest of the rest of the other legislation relating to local government provide municipalities with a structure to manage their administration. The report also outlines political decision-making systems, and defines principles for structuring administrations.
Municipal Mayors and municipal performance
While municipalities' woes continue to rip communities apart, Municipal Mayors as political heads of municipalities find themselves in the spotlight. Legislatively, a Mayor is a political head of a municipality and is accountable for the overall performance of that particular municipality.
When municipalities fail to deliver, all eyes turn to the Mayor. Mayors are often caught in the middle of many of the following challenges highlighted in the State of Local Government report:
tensions between the political and administrative interface;
poor ability of many councillors to deal with the demands of local government;
insufficient separation of powers between political parties and municipal councils;
lack of clear separation between the legislative and executive;
inadequate accountability measures and support systems and resources for local democracy; and
poor compliance with the legislative and regulatory frameworks for municipalities.
Mayors were fingered again by the Auditor General's report which stated that, "Mayors and Municipal Managers must set an example by consistently executing their legislated duties and then ensuring that compliance oriented control environments exist within municipalities and municipal entities" (Auditor General South Africa (2009/10).
The Auditor General's report continues to highlight Mayors' failures to meet some of their legislative responsibilities, such as:
Coordinating the annual revision of the Integrated Development Plan and coordinating the preparation of the annual budget;
Determining how the Integrated Development Plan was to be taken into account or revised for the purposes of the annual budget;
Tabling the annual budget at a council meeting at least 90 days before the start of the budget year;
Ensuring that the council approves the municipality's service delivery and budget implementation plan within 28 days after the approval of the annual budget;
Supervising budgetary control and early identification of financial problems. (Auditor General South Africa (2009/10).
The State of Local Government report (2009) indicates that the effective functioning of a municipality begins with its political leadership. In respect to governance the overarching question during the assessment process centred on the effectiveness, capability and integrity of the local political council leadership, with the mayor being part of this leadership.
After launching the Local Government Turnaround Strategy (2009), the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs summoned all Municipal Mayors and local government MECs in October 2010 to demonstrate their commitment to the strategy by signing service delivery performance agreements.
The level of non-compliance with laws and regulations applicable to municipalities and municipal entities is an area of concern.
The minister proudly said, "Today we are part of real history in the making. For the first time the country will witness the signing ceremony between myself, and the MECs for Local Government (LG) and between the MECs and the Mayors of the Delivery Agreement on Outcome 9. This signing constitutes our public commitment to create a responsive, accountable, effective and efficient Local Government (LG)".
The signing of this agreement with the minister came on the eve of 2011 Local Government elections which was also six months before the end of Mayors' terms in office. An official term of a Mayor in the office is equal to the local government period which is five years; and so these Mayors were made to sign performance agreements six months before the end of their terms. The whole idea of signing these agreements was questionable as the timing was bad, some were not even sure if they were to make it in the next round of elections, leaving the signing of the performance agreement as a media parade rather than a genuine performance monitoring issue and a service delivery concern.
The signing of performance agreements continued after the 2011 Local Government elections in various provinces. During the signing of these performance agreements, in the Eastern Cape Province the MEC for Local Government and Traditional Affairs Mr. Mlibo Qoboshiyane said, "Zero tolerance for complacency, incompetence and excuses in service delivery is going to be exercised in the Eastern Cape". It is clear that there is a move to bring into effect the oath that Mayors take when they are inaugurated that they would honestly and diligently serve their communities through the signing of these performance agreements.
Beyond the Mayors' control
While Mayors face scrutiny after municipal failures, there are many issues which are beyond their control which need to be weighed and compared with their line of accountability. Sections 154 (1) and 155 (6) and (7) of the Constitution, mandate the provincial government with the obligation to supervise, monitor and support local government. The provincial sphere can intervene in a municipality within its jurisdiction in terms of section 139 of the Constitution if the situation calls for that. The State of Local Government report shows that the last decade of local government was marred by poor performance, with only about 30 municipalities having experienced an intervention from provinces. The report said that "it has shown that the mechanisms in place were not well-supported by national government or sufficiently institutionalised, due to the absence of post-intervention measurement of improvement, and the weak application of intergovernmental checks and balances, i.e. the oversight and review process by the Minister, the NCOP and the Provincial Legislatures" (State of Local Government report (2009)).
A few Mayors were sacked on the spot as their municipalities experienced service delivery protests and rated as underperforming. In September 2009, the Thaba Chweu municipality's executive Mayor, Mrs. Clara Ndlovu in Mpumalanga Province, was sacked following two months of service delivery protests. In Standerton - a Lekwa Municipality Mayor Mrs. Juliet Radebe-Khumalo also in Mpumalanga Province became a casualty.
A few Mayors were sacked on the spot as their municipalities experienced service delivery protests and rated as underperforming.
The ANC, led by Julius Malema and Fikile Mbalula visited the municipality and saw to the sacking of a mayor for poor service delivery in October 2009.
1http://www.thenewage.co.za/Detail.aspx?news_id=25884&cat_id=1016
By signing the performance agreements some Mayors found themselves victims of political wars.
Is this proving to be a solution?
Looking at the examples cited above, the question remains, did the sacking of Mayors resolve the service delivery problems in these municipalities? Our research reveals that the answer is no, the challenges still persist because they were not necessarily hinged on the performance of the Mayors per se, but a whole host of other challenges far beyond the Mayor's control. Yes, it is good to have performance monitoring tools for the Mayors and in turn be able to measure the performance of municipalities, and yes, service delivery should be at the centre of this monitoring system, but so much more ought to be considered.
For starters, local government business is highly technical and complicated, the system of local government confuses even the people who are in it, yet, there is no minimum education qualification demand for election as a Mayor. Yet, we expect these people to miraculously turn the socio-economic tide at a local level around. There are challenges relating to separation of powers between the party and the municipal administration where Mayors are expected to tow the party lines at all costs, internal disputes and conflicts and staff performance and moral, the bigger factional issues at party level which in turn impact on municipal councils and relations at that level to name but a few and these are not within the control of the Mayor.
By signing the performance agreements some Mayors found themselves victims of political wars. Our research revealed that some ex-Mayors expressed dissatisfaction with the manner (publicity) in which the performance agreements signing was done, its timing and the fact that it was highly political (more for point scoring) as opposed to having the genuine interest of the community at heart and how they fell victims of bigger political agendas through the process.
The State of Local Government report (2009) identifies the three most common failures of local governance as:
1. Governance: Political infighting, conflict between senior management and councillors and human resource management issues.
2. Financial: Inadequate revenue collection, ineffective financial systems, fraud, misuse of municipal assets and funds.
3. Service delivery: Breach of sections 152 and 153 of the Constitution which outline service delivery obligations of municipalities. (State of Local Government report 2009)
If these three factors are carefully looked at, they have issues that are beyond Municipal Mayors' control. Since the country held the local government elections in May 2011 some municipalities are still struggling to establish ward committees and this is due to political rifts in the ruling political parties that are taking the lead in the unsuccessful establishment of ward committees.
Although legislatively, ward committees are not supposed to be politically biased, they are being hijacked by local politics and politicians who need to secure or strengthen their political base and in some instances Mayors do not have control over this.
While the State of Local Governance report indicates that the national government has allocated hugely significant sums of money to building municipal capacity over the years, the reality is in contrast to this. The National and Provincial governments departments are blamed that they owe municipalities billions of rand in terms of water and rental bills, and in turn, they accuse municipalities of inadequately collecting revenues and breaching the constitution by providing poor services to communities.
Conclusion
Local government is the closest sphere of government to local citizens. Since the establishment of local government, the sphere has always been confronted by many challenges; some need discipline from within local government itself, while others are beyond the control of local government. Many remedies have been sought in the past, including interventions by provinces in some cases, production of ambitious turn around strategies, Siyenza Manje, Project Consolidate and others, and recently, the sacking of ‘ill-performing" mayors. While developing systems to hold mayors to account is important, it is crucial that they do not find themselves casualties of a system that never supported them to thrive in the first instance.
There needs to be first and foremost consideration of the technical expertise required to manoeuvre through some of the technical documents presented at council, being able to ask the right questions from the officials, being able to represent the municipality well and attract investors, demanding a certain quality and standard of output from officials, etc. It takes a certain calibre of an individual to be able to achieve this. The truth of the matter is that one is able to think and lead as far as their education is able to carry them and beyond that they are limited. Forcing these people to commit to effective delivery of services when they do not even know what the basic delivery standards are and how these ought to translate to the performance agreements of the municipal officials is more like shooting through the dark. And therefore, much as we are in agreement with the ruling party that performance monitoring is key and that municipal mayors should be held accountable, we should be devising various other means of ensuring excellence at local government level at all times.
References: Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (Act No. 108 of 1996) | Auditor General South Africa, Consolidated General Report on the local government audit outcomes, 2009-10 | Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. State of Local Government in South Africa: Overviews Report. National State of Local Government Assessments. Working Documents. 2009. } Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. Local Government Turnaround Strategy, November 2009 http://www.thenewage.co.za/Detail.aspx?news_id=25884&cat_id=1016 | http://www.info.gov.za/speech/DynamicAction?pageid=461&sid=13386&tid=20844 | http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/sowetan/archive/2009/09/03/mayor-is-fired-aftermashishing- protests | http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/Standerton-mayoral-council-fired-20091021
2http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/Standerton-mayoral-council-fired-20091021