by Bonginkosi Masiwa

The Department of Provincial and Local Government has completed the first phase of the policy review initiated during the second half of 2007.

Below is a summary and brief commentary of the findings in the five different areas of inquiry, as per the information published on the DPLG website. 

The roles of provincial government and two-tier local government:

There is an indication that provincial government is set to stay, as it is said to have “contributed to the peaceful transition to democracy, social delivery and development over the past 14 years”. The provinces still have a role to play in addressing inequality, and it looks like the provinces themselves might be left to define what precisely they are going to undertake in this regard. 

Deepening local democracy, accountability and participation:

Government has acknowledged the importance of local democracy and has described it as “a major new force in the development of the country”. Government has taken note of the fact that the quality of accountability and participation needs to be enhanced as was alluded to by most submissions made by civil society. In the next phase of the policy review process the government may look at introducing additional measures to strengthen municipal accountability to communities. There is to be an examination of how existing participatory mechanisms such as ward committees, community development workers, IDP forums, community-based budgeting, and imbizos can be made to work more effectively to improve the quality of participation. However, there was no mention of what plans – in as far as resources are concerned – are to be put in place to enhance community access to the state. The government has acknowledged that it is crucial to measure the quality of citizen participation and also improve the day-to-day responsiveness and communication. To achieve this there is a need to identify specific pressure points, possibly training individuals on leadership and skills development, capacitating them on relations between council and administration, clarifying institutional roles. It is hoped that this will improve communication between council and community. Local economic development in poor communities was not given adequate attention in the initial assessment.

Strengthening capacity to meet basic needs and enable sustainable development:

The government plans to look at ways of complimenting initiatives such as Project Consolidate to improve the transfer of technical expertise into some municipalities to build municipal capacity and performance. There will also be an attempt to lay down a framework for a long-term institutional solution to skills shortages and to fight the backlogs in municipal infrastructure and services in the most vulnerable municipalities. However, to date no options have been fully developed. The number of vacancies at top municipal levels will be lowered. 

Refining the intergovernmental roles, functions and fiscal frameworks of spheres:

This section received a great deal of attention in the initial phase of the review process. The government is going to continue to look at ways of improving intergovernmental relations between the three distinctive, interdependent and interrelated spheres of government. It is now going to focus on clarifying certain issues for the public – for instance which sphere is accountable for delivering a particular service. When there is certainty about this, the public then knows who to hold accountable for non-performance. Government has accepted that “some uncertainty appears to exist with respect to particular functional areas”. The next phase of the policy review outcome will strive to make it clear whether it’s provinces or municipalities that are responsible for a particular function.  Government must become flexible in order to enhance its capacity to deal with delivery issues. The policy review outcome is meant to come up with ways of ensuring that the three spheres of government will closely co-ordinate their plans, budgets, and delivery programmes in order to achieve efficient, equitable and sustainable service delivery throughout the country. However, further detailed research will be undertaken on that.

Making co-operative governance work more effectively and improving oversight, performance management, and the monitoring and evaluation system:

The adequacy of the support provided to local government and the representation of local government in policy-making and in intergovernmental processes, particularly with respect to infrastructure planning at national and provincial levels, will also be reviewed in the next phase. However nothing has been said so far on the role of civil society regarding the above. We hoped the process would pay particular attention to the capacitation of people working in structures at all levels of government if efficiency is to be enhanced.

After further work has been undertaken under each of the above areas, a draft white paper for further public consultation in mid 2008 will be released. Civil society hopes to see other issues, that were not dealt with in the provisional stages, being pursued in the next stage of the policy formulation process.

The Local Government Transformer Feb/Mar 2008