Budget 2025, with the drama surrounding it, is all the rage these days. With the Government of National Unity on the ropes, let’s keep talking about how governments spend your money – or do not.
Every quarter, National Treasury (NT) publishes Local Government Revenue and Expenditure reports that track municipal spending. Municipalities are funded primarily through rates and the Local Government Equitable Share (LGES), which are municipalities’ share of nationally raised revenue.
The spending covers free basic services, i.e. 6kl of water and 50kWh of electricity, administrative costs and community services. So why is the Emfuleni Municipality returning R640 million in unspent funds? Good question. The funds in question are from the Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG), allocated to municipalities “to provide specific capital finance for eradicating basic infrastructure backlogs through the construction of new infrastructure.”
The Vaal area is beset by failing water infrastructure and sewage problems that have severe public health implications. On the other side of the province, the SA Human Rights Commission has found that the failure of the Mogale City Municipality violated residents’ human rights.
Yet, as I noted in an earlier column, the problem isn’t being addressed, due to a lack of technical expertise – and no political will to get experts in to fix the problem. The latest revenue and expenditure report shows the MIG to be one of the best-performing grants in terms of its recorded expenditure and total allocation.
The report notes six of NT’s infrastructure-related grants are underperforming. In the latest Brenthurst Foundation polling, nearly a quarter of South African voters believe that infrastructure maintenance is the largest problem in their municipality. Voters, residents and ratepayers can see the decline of their cities and towns in real time.
And municipalities are (technically) unable and (politically) unwilling to address these issues.
Paths for reform
As of September/October 2024, forty-one of South Africa’s 257 municipalities are under administration. Sixty-six are classified as “distressed”. Only thirty were classified as “stable”.
Placing municipalities under administration would not improve their chronic issues, which include nearly non-existent tax bases, low revenue collection and high rates of unemployment, etc.
Co-operative Governance Minister, the IFP’s Velenkosini Hlabisa, suggested that failing municipalities be merged. However, this will not address the core issue – which ultimately stems from the lack of economic growth, which itself stems from a lack of maintenance, infrastructure investment and the creation of jobs in these municipalities.
With a growing economy, municipalities would bring in investment, creating jobs. This in turn creates a revenue base for the municipality to improve its service delivery.
To prove the unreliability of placing governments under administration – using the North West provincial government as an example – I will argue that it is best to dissolve governments facing chronic failures, and give residents the opportunity to elect a government that will address these issues. There have been many judgements declaring government failures as “unconstitutional”, because members fail to fulfil their duties. The only genuine way to rectify the situation is to give the power back to the people to elect a government that will adequately fulfil their constitutional mandate.
The North West province was placed under national administration in the middle of 2018, due to the “collapse of governance systems and structures”. At the time, national government noted it was the broadest use of this power since 1994.
The situation hasn’t improved. If anything, it has worsened.
The ANC’s reputation for good governance is non-existent. If State Capture is anything to go by, the party is synonymous with ‘corruption’. Redeploying cadres and other government officials won’t address the fundamental issue at hand: governing is a contract between the people and government. If you cannot hold up your side, the relationship breaks down irreparably – especially in the case of service delivery.
The ANC is unwilling, it appears, to admit when it has made a mistake for fear of retribution. That comes, I’d argue, from seeing government and the state as a path to power rather than as a facilitator of people’s aspirations for a better quality of life.
Presidential Working Groups won’t help
President Cyril Ramaphosa is set to visit the Eastern Cape this week on an oversight visit. There he will find one of the most dysfunctional provinces and municipalities in the country, which the Auditor-General has noted does not have the necessary processes or intervention plans to help restore adequate service delivery. Not that plans will help set the municipality on the right course, as I detail below.
Hopefully, the President doesn’t announce the establishment of a Working Group as he has done for other metro municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal or Gauteng.
Here’s why: executive mayors earn anywhere between R883,335 and R1,585,051 per annum (incl. 2.5% increase for 2024), depending on the grade of the municipality – which is determined primarily by the number of residents in said municipality.
Mayors and their Members of the Mayoral Committee are statutorily obliged to deliver services to residents. It is what they are paid to do. Creating a committee to address the issues that municipal executives know exist is an illusion.
Why can’t they simply do the job they are paid to do?
Chronic issues
As far back as 2009 – nine years after South Africa’s local government system was reformed – the then-Department of Provincial & Local Government created the Local Government Turnaround Strategy, yet today, these problems still exist. Politicians aren’t interested in creating a conducive environment that promotes economic development. I know I’d be embarrassed if I was elected as a public representative, and I did nothing to help my community. So much for Ubuntu and the Batho Pele principles. Lip service.
I started out this column writing about underspending and the lack of respect that municipal executives have for the needs of residents. I don’t take this column lightly, considering the news from Discovery’s latest claims report detailing the prevalence of suicide amongst older South Africans.
South Africans are facing a Berlin Wall of problems and barriers that probably don’t exist anywhere else in the world. And like many who successfully crossed the Wall despite the increasingly sophisticated barriers, South Africans have shown their resilience in the face of adversity. When the state fails, communities step up because they know what is at stake.
With jobs and a free and prosperous society, South Africa can shoot the lights out. (Don’t worry, Eskom, we’ll replace them on our own). There’s a quote from Ronald Reagan that sticks with me: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”
South Africa is worth fighting for. Join Team #WhatSACanBe.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ericssonuxlab/34214180554/]
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