On the 5th of December 2000 South Africa held its first elections for the first truly democratic and fully representative municipal councils. This event had a historical significance for local government similar to the 1994 elections held for national and provincial governments. These elections were held in terms of an electoral system prescribed in the Local Government Municipal Structures Act 117/98 which seeks to enhance and give more flesh to Section 152 (1) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa which reads as follows:

Section 152 (1) The Objectives Of Local Government
(a) To provide democratic and accountable government for local communities
(b) To ensure provision of services to communities in a sustainable manner
(c) To promote social and economic development
(d) To promote a safety and healthy environment and
(e) To encourage the involvement of communities and community organisations in the matters of local governance

Section 153 Which Deals With Developmental Duties Of Municipalities Reads:
(a) A municipality must structure and manage its administration and budgeting and planning process to give priority to the basic needs of the community and to promote the social and economic development of the community

In December 2010 South Africa celebrated its first decade of local democracy and anniversary of the current local government system and still the Audit opinions by Auditor-General continued to offer little cause for celebrations as most municipalities received unqualified audits for years in a row. As a result, improving this has now become the focus of the ruling party. For the third time since 2000, South Africans will yet again vote (on the 18th of May 2011) seeking to elect the kind of leadership they want to provide them with good and responsible leadership for the next 5 years in the local sphere of government.

They will also be afforded an opportunity to endorse and or reject local government councillors that are currently governing in various municipalities. These elections which are proving to be highly contested will again test the strength and popularity of the ANC as the ruling party.

If the recent service delivery protests are anything to go by and the threats in the media by various community groupings to boycott elections or to vote for an alternative party other than the ANC, the ruling party has reason to be jittery. The internal infighting over party lists also threatens the popularity of the ruling party as the election date draws nearer. If one looks at how local government has performed over the past 10 years, as much as some gains have been made in providing housing and some basic infrastructure, but the pace at which that has happened has been extremely slow.

Corruption and inequality appear to have sky-rocketed in local municipalities under the leadership of the ANC. Various strategies have been devised to turn the situation around but with little success. Cadre deployment continues to be at the centre-stage of a flawed transformation, leading to the employment of ill-qualified staff. Local politics have also thoroughly undermined public participation forums at the local level and rendered them ineffective.

The legislative framework that regulates municipalities has also come under fire in various platforms, with municipal officials claiming that it is rather complex and cumbersome, and makes too many requirements that take the time of officials away from finding strategic ways to respond to the needs of the citizens. Rather, the system demands that they concentrate on fulfilling the requirements of the law in order to obtain a clean audit report, which at this point is the goal of municipalities under the “operation clean audit campaign” that the ANC has launched, as part of its ‘noble’ intentions to make the sphere work.

Looking at how local government in general has performed over the past 10 years, one is bound to ask the question; did our municipal legislative framework set our municipalities up for failure?

In March 2000 a document entitled “Local Government in South Africa: Potential Disaster Despite Genuine Promise“ authored by James Manor of the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex was making rounds within corridors of the Department of Provincial and Local Government now the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs [ COGTA]. The document cautioned against the pernicious effects of over-regulation in local government and obsession by national bureaucrats with “first world prescripts”.

Sadly, our government failed to give attention to the expert advise and the result is that municipalities were laden with a plethora of highly complex tasks which judging by the Audit record they do not understand and are most unlikely to fulfil. Most municipalities struggle to fulfil their constitutional obligations in terms of Section 152 and Section 4 (1) of Local government Municipal Systems Act 2000.

Current municipal challenges can largely be attributed to the environment that gave birth to the system. This environment was amongst other things characterised by the austerity of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution Policy [GEAR] which imposed serious constrains on the developmental potential of municipalities, this limited the fulfilling of the strategic objectives and constitutional imperative of local government of delivering services to the people. The notion of creating viable, efficient, sustainable, democratic, responsive, accountable, affective and efficient local government dissipated.

Demarcation Act Of 1998
The strategy and policy of Amalgamating municipalities has also had dire consequences on the shape and performance of many municipalities. Driven by the need for “efficiency” more than 800 municipalities were reduced and amalgamated into the present 284. This caused serious challenges including the loss of essential data such as asset registers of the former small municipalities, yet the office of Auditor-General insist that without a comprehensive asset  Register the likelihood of obtaining an unqualified opinion is non existent.

Lack of Multiplicity Of Skills Required

Having observed that the Local Government White Paper failed to recognise that South Africa is a less developed country, Manor also highlighted the fact that the country faces a serious shortage of high quality technocrats, yet needlessly government went ahead to insist both in the Systems Act and Municipal Finance Management Act that local municipalities must intergrate and coordinate programmes from national and provincial government, improve health planning, become transport authorities to name just a few. All this, with limited resources and skills required to perform these duties.

Furthermore, municipalities were supposed to boost economic development and job creation and grow Small Medium and Micro Enterprises [SMMEs], assist land affairs with sector plans, strategize and implement social crime prevention measures and provide environmental design for safety and security purposes. They were also obliged to draw up water services management and water resources development plans, compile asset registers, produce Service Delivery and budgets Implementation Plans, the list is endless.

It is indicative of the many functions [legislative and otherwise] for which extensive reporting duties have been imposed on municipal officials with limited technical and financial capability. It is inconceivable as to how all these including but not limited to implementation of municipal own development programmes like [LEDs and IDPs] would be achieved by these ill-skilled officials most of whom find themselves in these senior positions through ‘cadre deployment’.

Let me further explore the mysterious pre-eminence of the opinion of the Auditor-General, it should be noted that municipalities over and above all these legislative requirements are:
1. Employers
2. Service Providers
3. Economic Development Facilitators
4. Inter-Sphere Service Delivery Integrators [housing being the most in demand]

These are indeed the most pertinent questions and they require a rigorous analysis of the state of local government legislative framework and factors that might completely change its outlook going forward. Failure to do so will result in more service delivery protest falling short of revolution that we have seen in North Africa.

Everybody else agrees that local government has been fragile and fluid for the past 10 years and a number of diagnoses have been taken by various local government specialists and experts. It is not clear whether the problem is the diagnosis or prescription or the legislative framework. Some corrupt officials, politicians and service providers have exploited these loop-holes and descended on municipalities like vultures in looting state resources, nepotism, venality, mendacity and all these had adverse effects on service delivery and perpetuated underdevelopment, as a result many municipalities continue to sink deeper into financial and administrative mayhem with no indication of radical rescue plan on the horizon.

In December Minister Shiceka admitted that most municipalities especially in the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and North West are dysfunctional and their situation is infact acute [Business Day 2/12/2010]. Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs is the epicentre of a developmental State. It is at the coalface of service delivery and is supposed to be an interface between the State and Communities. Its failure in providing strategic support to provincial and local government is testimony to its inability to realise its legislative and constitutional obligations.

The core of service delivery problems and challenges within municipalities lies in bad crafting of legislation governing local government.

By way of conclusion it is clear from the above analysis that:
• Local government legislative framework need to be reviewed and amended to fully compliment section 152 of the Constitution.
• Capacity building of all local government leadership is urgent, while we wait for the passing of the amendments in the Municipal Systems Act.
• Setting of reasonably higher quality standards that individuals must meet to be elected as councillors is crucial in order to ensure that municipal council are truly able to deliberate and pass resolutions on key strategic issues in municipalities.
• There is also a need to further interrogate a need for Constitutional amendments for a constituency based electoral system for the country as opposed to the proportional representation system that we currently use.
• There is a need to reform the ward committee system as a community representative structure in local government, and to develop and extend the scrutiny of public representatives by communities to all spheres of government.
• There is a need to develop an acceptable, balanced and transparent performance management system which will measure the performance of municipalities across their mandatory performance spectrum.
• Community scrutiny must be integral to the efficacy of ward committees and the overall governance of the country.
• There is a need to build bridges with civil society as a resource available to local municipalities whose focus is also to develop communities.
• There is a dire need also to strengthen the Anti-Corruption machinery.

The core of service delivery problems and challenges within municipalities lies  in bad crafting of legislation governing local government. A similar view was expressed by Minister Shiceka when he said “the State of Local Government report that we published in October last year is that there is an urgent need to streamline laws relating to local government with the objective of creating an enabling environment for an accelerated delivery of services to citizens of this country “(Delivery Magazine December 2010 page 29).

Former President Thabo Mbeki addressing parliament on debate on Reconciliation and Nation Building quoted an African-American poet Langston Hughes when he wrote “What happens to a Dream Deferred“, his conclusion was that it EXPLODES. Hopefully, communities would not get to this point as their dream continues to be deferred while COGTA and local government officials continue to grapple with the requirements of the law.

References: The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa | Local Government: Municipal Structures Act 58/99 | Local Government Municipal Systems Act/ 2000 | Local Government Municipal Finance Management Act 56/2003 | Local Government Law Bulletin Vol3 no 4 December 2001 | Delivery The Magazine for Local Government December 2010 | Business Day 2 December 2010 | Auditor-General Report on Municipalities | Manor, J., 2000. Local Government in South Africa : Potential disaster despite Genuine Promise , March 2000 | Mgwebi, G., 2010. Contemplating Ward Committees- Civil Society Alliance: Transformer Vol 16 No 6 | Kimemia, P., 2011. Reviewing 2010: Governance issues and Events: Transformer Vol.17 No1. 2011 | Former South Africa President T. Mbeki address to Parliament on Reconciliation and Nation Building Debate