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Many municipalities are failing their residents. A group of civil society organisations that work in local government raises six issues that have the potential to destroy effective governance and cause immense damage to communities.
Our local government system is remarkable and a testimony to South Africa's extraordinary resilience and progressive policies. Before 1994, municipalities were fragmented, racist, and subservient to their apartheid masters in other levels of government.
A carefully negotiated transition lifted local authorities into a new paradigm. Municipalities were restructured into a wall-to-wall democratic system, given significant autonomy, and charged with a developmental mandate, underpinned by a Bill of Rights to protect residents' dignity. This system, and the way in which it was negotiated and crafted, is a model for the world.
However, many municipalities are failing their residents. There is no need to rehash the statistics, anecdotes and case studies of municipal failure that South Africans are bombarded with on a daily basis. There is also no need to deny this reality by lifting up examples of well-run municipalities. We all know that the problem is massive and that it affects most, but not all, municipalities.
Concerned at state of local government
We represent a group of civil society organisations that work in local government. Like all who live in South Africa, we are deeply concerned about the state of local government. Municipalities face many challenges that push them into a corner. These range from a fledgling economy, a dated funding system, grinding poverty, and an imperfect regulatory and oversight system, amongst other things.
But in this contribution, we reach out to political parties, political leaders (or councillors) and independent councillors that must provide leadership to municipalities navigating these complexities. It goes without saying that a huge responsibility rests on your shoulders as guardians to ensure equitable service delivery and the rights of residents. As civil society organisations deeply committed to the success of municipalities in ensuring dignity to their residents, we ask you to consider several appeals.
Please, please do not take these appeals lightly. Each issue we raise has the potential to destroy effective governance and cause immense damage to communities.
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First, we implore you to improve the way you recruit candidates for party lists, ward elections and office-bearers. Because, while we encounter many excellent councillors in our work, we also encounter many who have neither the competence nor the integrity to fulfil their tasks.
Second, we ask that you adopt a servant leadership approach to your leadership. Providing political leadership to municipalities is a near-sacred task aimed at ensuring dignity for residents and developing local economies. It is not just a job opportunity.
Third, respect the outcome of elections. Peaceful transitions of power are a hallmark of mature democracies. As South Africans, we perfected this in a remarkably short time-span, and there are Western democracies that should learn from us. However, respecting the outcome of an election also means that, if the electorate did not provide you with a mandate to govern, you should not insist on governing.
Disrespecting voters
Critical opposition is as essential to the success of a municipality as governing. This means that, if you represent a tiny segment of the electorate, you ought to refuse offers to lead a government. And if you represent a big segment of the vote but need support for a majority, do not offer the mayoral chain to a micro party. Because in so doing, you do not only disrespect the voters but also set the municipality up for failure.
Fourth, we implore you to use your role in the council to insist on the appointment of senior officials that are non-partisan and are professional. And then let them do their job. Your role as political leaders in the council is to appoint them, provide policy guidance and exercise oversight over the decisions that they make. Your role is not to interfere with their work as it happens. If they are professionals, you can trust that they will base their management on your policy guidance and on their own professionalism.
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The senior officials in your administrations have the responsibility to appoint their staff and make procurement decisions. It is their preserve, not yours as politicians. Exercising oversight means that, if need be, you may query and even investigate their decisions afterwards. But it does not mean that you may be involved in the taking of those decisions.
Collapsed municipalities due to factionalism
Fifth, solve your internal party conflicts outside of the council chamber and outside of the municipal administration. Political parties are complex organisations with many divergent interests and personalities. We admire those tasked with leading these complicated dynamics. But we plead with you to shield the municipal council and the administration from the fall-out of your internal conflicts. The number of municipalities that collapsed as a direct result of factionalism within parties is frightening. Politically motivated killings of councillors are outrageous and tragic. It does not need to be that way. We urge each political party to train its political candidates on their respective values and ideologies and solve internal conflicts peacefully.
Sixth, we ask you to respect the sanctity of the council chamber. Council and committee meetings are sites of democratic debate, where arguments on law, policy and implementation are traded so that the best decision may prevail, and voted on. This takes place according to a set of rules, that protect the privilege of being a public representative, and the immunity from civil and criminal liability that comes with that privilege. Why, then do we so often see visuals of council meetings descending into chaos and even violence? Every insult, every scuffle and every hint of violence is a blow to our young democracy.
Custodians of democracy
As residents, as voters, and as organisations deeply committed to the success of our municipalities, our faith in this beautiful local democracy dwindles every time we witness these unseemly spectacles. Furthermore, they set an awful example to communities on how to deal with differences.
Once again, we know there are many reasons for the crisis in local government, and you may be tempted to swat away our appeals by pointing at those. However, you carry a special responsibility as custodians of our local democracy. The local government system is well-designed, and there are many stakeholders in government, business and civil society that stand ready to support municipalities. It is not too late to turn this around, but it takes a moral choice from each leader.
- Dullah Omar Institute, University of the Western Cape
- Planact
- The Ethics Institute
- Public Affairs Research Institute
- Isandla Institute
- Socio-Economic Rights Institute
- Innercity Federation
- Amandla.mobi
- Afesis-corplan
- Development Action Group
- Built Environment Support Group
- Democracy Development Programme
- Inner City Resource Centre
