Hunting elephants with pea-shooters

Summary - In its ambitious programme to halve poverty and unemployment by 2014 the government may have made a fundamental error by placing the major burden of responsibility for the delivery of social services on local government, where the problem of capacity is most acute. President Mbeki, in an address to the 2004 national conference of the South African Local Government Association (Salga), identified seven major problem areas and exhorted municipalities to: · strive for greater efficiency in service delivery, · respond more quickly to constituents’ concerns, · speed up transformation of the apartheid landscape by encouraging more racially-integrated residential areas, · increase capacity via effective management instead of relying on the crisis-driven interventions of consultants, · improve revenue collection, · ensure that financial commitments are commensurate with resources, and · co-ordinate the work of community development officers, municipal councillors and ward committees. Collectively, these challenges present a bleak picture of recurring local government malfunction and a formidable task of rectification. In speeches earlier this year the minister of provincial and local government, Sydney Mufamadi, reinforced some of Mbeki’s points as well as adding to them. He was disturbed that 500 (out of 3 200) ward councillors had failed to establish ward committees as required by government. He also expressed concern that the sustainability of basic services such as water, electricity and sanitation was being threatened by poor cost recovery. This was caused not only by the inability of the poor to pay but also by inter alia poor revenue collection and poor maintenance of infrastructure. Concrete evidence of the extent of the problems was supplied when the Free State provincial government took over the administration of three non-performing municipalities and the Eastern Cape government ordered forensic audits into fraud and mismanagement in 12 municipalities. The report of the auditor-general, Shauket Fakie, for the financial year ending 30 June 2003 states that municipal debt is R32 billion and increasing. Bad debt provision increased by an ‘alarming’ 28 per cent. ‘Municipalities are on the road to defaulting on their responsibilities,’ he warns. Local government problems are not confined to the smaller municipalities; the six metropolitan councils also give cause for concern. In Johannesburg, for example, there were allegations of corruption relating to the allocation of houses in Diepsloot as well as recurring power failures. The city’s billing department seems incapable of sending out accurate and up-to-date accounts, and uncollected revenues amount to nearly R1 billion per year. Another complicating factor in appraising the state of local government is the changing party political composition of local councils caused by floor-crossing. The lack of accountability implicit in this process has added to the cynicism that many South Africans feel towards politicians, and undermined respect for government. Since the September 2004 floor-crossing there have been renewed calls for the government to reconsider the electoral task team report on the electoral system. The report’s majority opinion favoured the introduction of a greater constituency component, while the minority view was that the party list system should be retained. Whilst cabinet is dismissive of calls for electoral reform; government will review the matter before the 2009 elections.

The Mbeki administration may have made a fundamental error in relation to its ambitious programme to halve South Africa’s widespread poverty and high unemployment by 2014, the 20th anniversary of the establishment of full democracy in 1994 when the first national and provincial elections based on universal adult suffrage were held.

Its mistake — or, perhaps more accurately, high risk strategy — has been to place the major burden of responsibility for the delivery of social services, on which its programme depends in large measure, on the weakest level of government: the third tier of municipal or local government, where the ubiquitous problem of capacity is most acute.

The minister of provincial and local government, Sydney Mufamadi, notes in his budget speech for 2004-2005 that the 284 municipalities are earmarked as “the provider of choice” for the delivery of basic social services1. But, he adds, the limited capacity and resources of “some municipalities” is an obstacle to action.2

Government representatives, from president Thabo Mbeki downwards, admit that there are problems to overcome and challenges to meet in local government, though they present the problems as manageable and the challenges as surmountable. It is nevertheless instructive to provide a synopsis of their views.

Mbeki identifies no less than seven problems afflicting local governance in his speech to the 2004 national conference of South African Local Government Association (Salga). As if to emphasise the case for remedial action the list is repeated in the 1 to 7 October edition of ANC Today.3

Mbeki’s solutions to some of the problems require the municipalities to:

• Focus on the delivery of social services to all residents, to, as Mbeki puts it, “get the basics right”. His exhortation to greater efficiency in service delivery is modified in some measure by his recognition that “great strides” have been made in the delivery of free quotas of water (6 kilolitres per household per month) and electricity (50 kilowatts per household per month).
• Respond more accurately and more quickly to the concerns of constituents. The injunction implies that municipal councillors should identify the issues that concern their constituents and not assume that they know what is best for them.
• Speed up transformation of the apartheid landscape. Translated from government newspeak that means municipalities should be more zealous in breaking from the historical pattern of segregated living areas for blacks and whites and advance the growth of racially-integrated residential areas.
• Increase their capacity to deliver through the achievement of effective senior management instead of relying on the crisis-driven interventions of consultants.

The indefatigable and prolix Mbeki prescribes further that municipalities should:

• Maximise their revenue base, improve their collection of revenue and ensure that expenditure is focused on service delivery. Mbeki observes that “insufficient resources” is cited as a problem whenever local government deficiencies are discussed.
• Adjust the burdens imposed on municipalities so that they are commensurate with their resources. In a preface to that observation Mbeki notes, firstly, that there has been a move to decentralise service delivery to local government over the last decade, and, secondly, that it is counterproductive to impose additional responsibilities on municipalities already struggling to fulfil their existing functions.
• Co-ordinate and synchronise the work of community development officers — who are being deployed to local government — municipal councillors and ward committees. It should be noted in parenthesis that ward committees consist of community representatives and those councillors who were elected to represent particular wards rather than as general representatives on the party list.4

While any one of these problems or challenges might not be particularly onerous on their own, collectively they appear to present the government with a formidable task of rectification or, to put it differently, to depict a bleak picture of reoccurring local governmental malfunction.

Mufamadi, in three keynote speeches on local government between June and September 2004, offers a perspective that reinforces some of the points made by Mbeki as well as adding to them.

A problem that appears to be preying on his mind is the failure of 500 ward councillors to establish ward committees as required by government. While 2 700 ward committees have been established out of a possible total of 3 200, Mufamadi seems particularly upset by the 500 who did not. He states: “There is no way you can exaggerate the pathology of the situation: 500 outstanding ward committees is 500 too many”.5 In what might be construed as an invitation to Salga to critically examine itself, Mufamadi adds: “(The) Salga conference must assess whether 2 700 ward committees were established thanks to Salga’s input or whether they were established despite Salga”.6

In the same speech Mufamadi addresses the issues raised by recent protest action in Intabazwe, near Harrismith, where demonstrations were held against the inefficient or even, according to some protestors, non-existent delivery of social services and where police intervention led to the death of one protestor. Mufamadi observes that had a ward committee being established it would not have been necessary for the police to advise a local councillor that it would be “dangerous for him to meet with the people”.7

The dissatisfaction of residents in the Free State is not confined to Intabazwe. It seems to be common, if not endemic, to Free State townships under the governance of smaller municipalities with limited revenue bases. In his already quoted speech to Salga, Mbeki recites a long list of problems experienced by the residents of Ezenzeleni municipality. They range from complaints about the dearth of communal taps to accusations of nepotism and corruption.

Mufamadi refers to the gap that exists between the expectations aroused by the new democratic order and the poor delivery record of “some municipalities”. He expresses concern, too, about the problem of “cost recovery” for the delivery of water, electricity and sanitation. He notes that the “sustainability of these services” is hampered by the inability of the people to pay for them or what he describes as the “income-poverty that is the lot of a substantial portion of our population”.8 In an earlier speech to the national assembly, however, Mufamadi admits that the cause of the problem is not simply “income poverty”. It has a multiplicity of causes, including “poor revenue collection” and poor “maintenance of existing infrastructure”, as well as the “absence of a robust revenue base”, especially in rural areas, and “the paucity of municipal infrastructure”.9

What emerges, so to speak, from the government’s mouth, is the conclusion that local government is still beset by serious and deep-rooted problems. While it would be curmudgeonly not to acknowledge that progress has been made, it would be naïve to assume that local government will meet the huge responsibilities imposed on it without constant monitoring by government and increased support from the provincial and national governments.

In the language of newspeak, the challenge of “sustainable development” is still before South Africa, the more so as the Free State provincial government has taken over the administration of three non-performing municipalities and the Eastern Cape government has ordered forensic audits into fraud and financial mismanagement at 12 municipalities in that province10.

The auditor-general, Shauket Fakie, provides disturbing evidence of the parlous state of many municipalities in a report for the financial year ending on 30 June 2003. He states that municipal debt is huge, totalling R32 billion, and getting progressively larger. He observes that it rose 12 per cent in the previous financial year and that bad debt provision increased by an “alarming” 28 per cent. “Municipalities are on the road to defaulting on their responsibilities,” he warns.11 Even if allowance is made for developments since then — which include consolidation of the municipal infrastructure grant and the allocation of R15,6 billion to municipalities to spend over the “medium term expenditure framework”12 — the situation is hardly reassuring.

It is comforting to assume that local government problems are essentially those of the smaller municipalities, particularly those situated in what Mufamadi terms “rural enclaves of endemic poverty”. But even the six conurbations that are designated as metropolitan councils under the Municipal Structures Act of 1998 are not without their problems.

The allegations of corruption relating to the allocation of houses and the concomitant angry protest marches in the informal settlement of Diepsloot — which falls under the jurisdiction of the Johannesburg metropolitan council — are a reminder of that. So, too, are the recurring power failures that afflict South Africa’s biggest city and the seeming inability of its billing department to ensure that its accounts are accurate and up-to-date. The leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance in the Johannesburg city council, Mike Moriarty, calculates that uncollected revenue from households amounts to nearly R1 billion a year. It could — or should — be spent on improving the electricity grid, clearing blockages in the city sewers and training more metro police, he reckons.13 Another item can be added to Moriarty’s list of items on which uncollected revenue could be spent: the need for proper maintenance of the traffic light system to minimise the almost daily dangers faced by motorists having to negotiate their way around non-functioning robots.

Another complicating development needs to be considered in any appraisal of the state of local government. It is the changing party political composition of local government caused by the amendment to the constitution allowing two windows of opportunity for floor-crossing between elections, without the floor-crossers (or defectors) having to forfeit their seats as prescribed in the amended constitution.

Floor crossing has taken place twice at local government level since the December 2000 local government election, first in 2002 and then in September 2004. It is regrettable that it took place with minimal if any consultation with the voters who elected the councillors in the first place. Not surprisingly it has not bolstered respect for either the floor-crossers or the institution to which they were elected. On the contrary: the lack of accountability implicit in the process of en masse changes in political allegiance without consultation has added to the reserves of cynicism that colour the attitudes of many South Africans towards politicians as self-serving men and women. The cynicism is reflected in references to floor-crossers as double-crossers and political prostitutes or “crostitudes”.14

The cynicism is hardly surprising, given the provenance of the amendment allowing for floor-crossing: a deal between the African National Congress (ANC) and the New National Party (NNP), which allowed former NNP members to resume their NNP identity and to vote with or even to join the ANC. It seems to have mattered little to the signatories to the ANC-NNP co-operative governance accord that the NNP members were elected as municipal councillors in 2000 under the colours of the newly formed Democratic Alliance and with an explicit mandate to build a strong opposition to the ANC.

The extent to which the composition of the municipalities has changed as a result of the 2002 and 2004 floor-crossings can be summarised briefly.

• In 2002 340 councillors elected under DA colours resumed their NNP identity. In the Western Cape they speedily cast their lot in with the ANC. The two parties jointly took over the governance of Cape Town, the only metropolitan council to evade ANC control in the 2000 local government elections.
• In 2004 the NNP went a step further. After abjectly surrendering to the ANC after the 14 April general election, 191 former NNP councillors defected to the ANC. They accounted for well over half the total of 326 defections to the ANC in the September floor-crossing window of opportunity. The next biggest contributor to the ANC was the small but predominantly black United Democratic Front.15

Since then there have been renewed calls for the ANC government to reconsider the electoral task team report on the electoral system. The report, which was commissioned by the government, consisted of a majority and a minority opinion. The majority report favours the introduction of a greater constituency component, for which there is some provision in local government elections but none for national and provincial elections. At the national level the majority recommended that 300 of the 400 national assembly seats be allocated to multiple seat constituencies. The rationale is that multiple seat constituencies would introduce a higher degree of accountability by elected representatives to their constituents. The minority report favours retention of the party list system of proportional representation, which, while theoretically guaranteeing representation to the smaller parties, tends to empower party bosses rather than grass-roots voters.

A cabinet communiqué is dismissive of calls for electoral reform. It describes them as an “orchestrated campaign” and notes the issue of electoral reform has not been raised in imbizos with the “mass of the people”. On a more hopeful note, however, it states that government will implement its earlier decision to review the matter before the 2009 national and provincial elections.16

Endnotes
1 Mufamadi, 21 June 2004 as recorded on government wesite: www.gov.za.
2 Ibid.
3 Mbeki, 29 September 2004: www.gov.za. ANC Today, 1 to 7 October 2004.
4 Ibid.
5 Mufamadi, 27 September 2004: www.gov.za.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Mufamadi speech to national council of provinces, 24 August 2004: www.gov.za.
10 Business Day, 22 September 2004.
11 Business Day, 10 September 2004.
12 Mufamadi speech to national council of provinces.
13 Sunday Independent, 5 September 2004.
14 Southern Africa Report, 24 to 30 September 2004.
15 These figures are culled from the records of the Independent Electoral Commission (www.elections.za).
16 Cabinet statement 6 October 2004, www.gov.za.