Description
Description tell about imperfect transition local government reform in south africa 1994 2012.
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Local government is a mirror of the larger political and economic forces, cleavages and
problems that are shaping South African society. It is these deeper fault lines in society,
rather than the Zuma government’s turnaround strategy or the 2011 local elections result,
which will drive future policy and determine its efects. Tis is the frst lesson of local
government reform in all four terms of national government examined in this chapter.
In each term, national policy reforms were moulded by shifting political and economic
circumstances and larger national interests, not simply by the unfolding logic of the original
blueprint for local government in the 1998 white paper. Te outcome of eighteen years
of policy reform, however, was not the new society imagined in the white paper, but an
imperfect transition that is local government today: where peaceful electoral competition
coexists with violent public protests, racial group areas endure in fact, even if not in law,
pockets of good governance survive amidst systemic corruption and mismanagement, and
national policy goals consistently exceed local government’s capacity to deliver them and
the economy’s skills base. Te second lesson fows from that reality – due to the fact that the
problems of local government are so nested in the broader problems of our society, further
local government policy reform and sweeping national turnaround strategies are likely to
have imperfect impacts on ‘the problem of local government’ in South Africa.
INTRODUCTION
Te Mandela government’s white paper on local government ofered a new vision of
post-apartheid society, embodied in the concept of developmental local government
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Imperfect transition – local
government reform in South Africa
1994-2012
Derek Powell
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(Ministry of Constitutional Development and Provincial Afairs, 1998). Te territory of
the country would be divided into municipalities, each governed by an elected municipal
council. Municipalities would integrate racially divided group areas under a single local
authority and a common tax base. Local development plans would guide programmes of
national reconstruction and development. Citizens would partner with municipalities to
build non-racial communities. Municipalities would redistribute expenditure to service
delivery in poor black communities. By the time that implementation began in 2000 the
force of this transformative vision was already spent – overtaken by hard political and
economic realities, overwhelmed by the scale of institutional changes involved and the
distance between the ideal and delivering practical change. Tis chapter examines the
major local government policy reforms
1
in the four terms of national government since
1994, analysing key factors that have informed policy and shaped its efects, concluding
with a perspective from an early 2012 vantage point on the prospects for policy reform
following the 2011 local elections.
Te chapter’s central argument is that in the four terms of national government,
local government reforms were not unfolding episodes in a continuous, uninterrupted
process of implementing the white paper’s vision for developmental local government.
Policy and local institutions were shaped less by original design than by changing
political and economic realities in the country, competing national policy objectives,
often by strategic miscalculations, and more lately by competition for power in
the ANC.
Te outcome of eighteen years of local government reform was not the
new society imagined in the white paper, but an imperfect transition that is local
government today: Formal electoral competition coexists with increasingly violent
public protests between elections. Pockets of performance endure amidst systemic
corruption and mismanagement. And the expectations of policy-makers continually
exceed local delivery capacity and the skills base of the economy. Local government
is a refection of South African society, and it is the deeper fault lines in our society
which have consistently shaped the design and impact of policy. Te ANC will interpret
the result of the 2011 election as popular support for its turnaround strategy for
local government, but the factors impacting on local government efectiveness are
substantially beyond the control of policy-makers and unable to be reversed through
sweeping policy solutions.
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Te chapter now assesses the serial eforts of South Africa’s successive democratic
governments to close the persistent gap between the ideals of local government
transformation and realised turnaround on the ground.
DEVELOPMENTAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT – THE MANDELA
GOVERNMENT OF NATIONAL UNITY (1994-99)
Te process to formulate the white paper intersected with three major developments in
the country, each of which left an imprint on local government policy and institutions.
First, the Constitutional Assembly was writing the country’s new constitution. In 1996
local government graduated from a statutory institution to a full sphere of government
with a broad developmental mandate. Second, following the frst democratic elections
in 1994, the ANC-led government of national unity (GNU) took ofce with a strong
mandate from the electorate to rebuild and develop the country. Local government was
to play a lead role in reducing poverty, providing services to meet basic needs. Tird, to
grow the economy, government adopted a macro-economic framework in 1996 which
introduced fscal austerity measures. Tereafter, local government reforms would be
disciplined by fscal reform goals, budget contraction and tighter treasury controls.
Te white paper’s vision for local government was thus conceived in a context defned
by competing policy objectives. Tis section examines the impact this has had on the
original policy vision of local government.
Origin of developmental local government in the constitutional negotiations
Te genealogy of developmental local government can be traced back to the civic
struggles against apartheid of the 1980s. A powerful civic movement had emerged
in response to the appalling conditions in black townships and the government’s
attempts to establish black local authorities in townships without conceding full
citizenship rights to blacks. Te civic struggles linked local grievances to the cause of
national liberation. After 1990, civics and local authorities in towns and cities across
the country began to negotiate local settlements to rent and service boycotts and
the amalgamation of racial local authorities.
2
Tese initiatives established the place
of local actors at the national negotiating table, the role of local government under
the democratic order, and the founding concepts of developmental local government
(such as ‘one city one tax base’ and phased-in transition). When the fnal national
negotiations process got underway in 1993, local actors negotiated a new democratic
dispensation for local government in the Local Government Negotiating Forum
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(LGNF).
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One of the outcomes of the LGNF was the Local Government Transition Act
of 1993 (LGTA) which outlined the pathway for the transition to full local democracy.
4
Te LGTA set out three phases for local government transition. Te frst,
pre-interim phase (1993-1995) started with the negotiated settlement in 1993 and
concluded with the election of transitional local councils in 1995/96. Local governments
of unity were established and consensus seeking was promoted through measures such
as a two-thirds majority vote to adopt the budget and proportional representation on
the executive committee (Steytler & De Visser, 2009
aras 1-13). Te Act provided
for provincial commissions to demarcate the boundaries of the transitional urban,
rural and metropolitan municipalities, which led to the creation of 842 municipalities
governed by transitional councils elected in 1995/6. Te elections inaugurated the
second, interim phase (1995-2000), which coincided with the term of the Mandela
government and the adoption of the new constitution in 1996 and concluded with
the frst fully democratic local elections in 2000, which would launch the third and
fnal phase.
The reconstruction and development programme (RDP)
Te RDP was the ANC’s vision for social justice after apartheid and the guiding
framework for government policy in the frst term (ANC, 1994). Te RDP gave local
government an expansive mandate to meet basic needs and promote people-centred
government and outlined the key principles of democratic local government – such as
a single tax base, participatory government, cross-subsidisation of service delivery,
and writing of of the debts accrued by black local authorities. Te white paper would
consolidate the RDP principles into a vision for developmental local government.
Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR)
GEAR was adopted in 1996 to boost economic growth to 6 percent, the minimum
rate needed to create jobs, extend service delivery and overcome inequality. GEAR
introduced short-term austerity, including defcit reduction, budget reprioritisation,
and stronger state coordination of fscal and budget policy (Ministry of Finance, 1996).
GEAR was the guiding framework for a comprehensive process to reform the budget
process, the intergovernmental fscal system, fnancial management and accounting
practices which rolled out over the next fve years. Various streams of capital payments
to municipalities were consolidated into the Consolidated Municipal Infrastructure
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Programme in 1996. Te local government equitable share formula was introduced in
1998 to subsidise a package of basic municipal services to indigent households. Tese
major reforms to local government fnances were introduced contemporaneously with
the drafting of the white paper.
The white paper and legislation
Te white paper defned developmental local government as (Ministry of Constitutional
Development and Provincial Afairs, 1998:17):
... local government committed to working with citizens and groups within the community to
fnd sustainable ways to meet their social, economic and material needs and improve the quality
of their lives.
In 1998 the Municipal Demarcation Act (Act No. 27 of 1998) and the Municipal
Structures Act (Act No. 117 of 1998) were promulgated to give territorial and
structural efect to the policy. Te former Act created a demarcation board to determine
the boundaries of the new municipalities, 284 municipalities were eventually
established. Te latter provided for the structural, political and functional institutions
for metropolitan, district and local municipalities, with the latter two tiers sharing
jurisdiction over rural areas.
From the start, local government policy and institutions were imprinted by
competing national objectives. First, the constitution and RDP gave local government
a broad mandate to meet basic needs and redistribute capital spending to poor
communities, the central ideas behind municipal integrated development planning
and district-led redistribution. Second, intergovernmental fscal policy, however,
would now consistently discipline local government policy in line with macro-economic
goals. In practice this meant a contraction of expenditure on service delivery and
stronger central control over all policy-making, progressively shifting the real levers of
policy control from the Department of Constitutional Developmental to the National
Treasury. Tird, by the time the white paper was adopted it was already accepted that
redistribution would be a national, not a local, responsibility, and the abolition of the
regional services council levy was on the cards (abolished in 2003). In efect, these
policies knocked of one of the main rationales for district government and its only
source of redistributable income. Fourth, the design of the local government equitable
share was predicated on the assumption that local government raised 90 percent of its
own revenue and only 10 percent would be subsidised through the intergovernmental
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grant system (Department of Finance, 1998:23). Tis resulted in the underfunding of
municipal service delivery, an issue that emerged sharply at the ANC’s debriefng after
the 2011 elections. Fifth, the repeal in 1996 of the Profession of Towns Clerks Act,
which had regulated the appointment of qualifed professionals as municipal managers,
efectively left the qualifcations and competences of municipal managers unregulated
until the National Treasury introduced regulations in 2007.
5
Te net efect of these
developments was that at the same time that municipal boundaries were expanding
to include under-serviced rural populations and townships and national policy was
giving local government a vast developmental mandate, the new sphere was being
asked ‘to do more with less resources’ and a crumbling skills base.
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ESTABLISHING DEVELOPMENTAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT – THE
FIRST MBEKI GOVERNMENT (1999-2004)
Te frst elections under the new system took place in 2000 at the start of the frst
Mbeki government, the fnal phase of the local government transition. Te Department
of Provincial and Local Government replaced the Department of Constitutional
Development. Two main priorities occupied the term. Te frst was establishing the
new municipalities and inducting the new councils. Government planners divided the
fnal phase into three periods: Two years were set aside for establishment (2000-02),
followed by a two-year period of consolidating the new systems (2002-05) and the
sustainability phase (2005 onwards), by which time the new systems were expected
to be fully operational. By 2001 it was clear that the transition timeline was seriously
fawed. Against all of the main indicators, the establishment process was slow. Te
institutional framework for local government was also incomplete (Department of
Provincial and Local Government, 2001).
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Te second priority was completing the policy, legislative, and regulatory
frame works for municipal planning, service delivery, fnances and administration.
In 2001 government adopted a policy of providing a package of free basic services
(FBS) in water, electricity, sanitation and refuse services to all citizens, targeting poor
households. National subsidies to local government for basic services would increase
over the next 10 years. However, at the time FBS was introduced, there was no fnal
division of the functional responsibility for these services between districts and locals
(only fnalised in 2003), and major restructuring was involved in transferring water
schemes and staf from the water sector to local government.
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Te legislative framework was completed with the passage of the Municipal
Systems Act (Act No. 32 of 2000), regulating planning, service delivery, performance
monitoring and public participation; the Municipal Finance Management Act (Act No.
56 of 2003), regulating fnancial management, accounting, supply-chain management,
reporting and budgeting; the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework
Act (Act No. 41 of 2003), providing for relations between traditional leadership and
municipalities; and the Municipal Property Rates Act (Act No. 6 of 2004), regulating
property evaluations and taxing. Te intergovernmental grant system was also
undergoing major reform, leading to the phased-in introduction of the Municipal
Infrastructure Grant in 2003. Perhaps the most important of these reforms was
the fnance management legislation, which introduced international standards for
fnancial management in all municipalities, and progressively consolidated National
Treasury control over local government policy.
Te contradictions in local government policy had deepened under the frst
Mbeki government. National policy had created heightened expectations about local
government’s contribution to poverty relief, setting frm targets for universal access
to basic services. But municipalities were still struggling with basic problems of
establishment, and the policy, legislative and fscal frameworks regulating municipal
systems were yet to be completed.
INCLUSIVE GROWTH AND POVERTY REDUCTION – THE SECOND
MBEKI GOVERNMENT (2004-09)
Te central objective of the second Mbeki government was economic growth of 6
percent and a fairer distribution of its benefts (Presidency, 2004:33-34).
A dangerous
gap had opened between what Mbeki began to call the frst and second economies
– the elite on top, the poor masses without economic hope at the bottom, and no
‘connecting staircase’ between the two economies (Pressley, 9 October 2003). Local
government was conceptualised as an important bridge. Improved capital expenditure
in the urban built environment (transport, energy, FIFA World Cup stadia) would
crowd in private sector investment, boosting growth in the frst economy and hence
job creation. Municipal expenditure on basic needs, as part of a wider social safety
net for the poor, would help to combat poverty in the second economy. But local
government lacked the engineering, planning, fnancial and project management
skills that were essential to fulfl these tasks. Te economy was not producing these
scarce skills (Presidency, 2008). Special short-term national measures were needed to
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boost the municipal skills base. Government had miscalculated the disastrous impacts
of transformation on municipal skills.
Local government reform had three main objectives during the term: deploying
expertise to skills-depleted municipalities (known as Project Consolidate), stronger
coordination of public spending on growth and fghting poverty, through more
centralised intergovernmental relations (the Intergovernmental Relations Framework
Act No. 13 of 2005) and a new strategic framework for local government (the Five Year
Strategic Agenda, including long-term policy review).
Project Consolidate
Project Consolidate was a two-year national intervention (2004-06) to support
municipalities lacking the expertise to discharge their mandate to provide basic
services. It also sought to address the fact that national and provincial departments
were not fulflling their constitutional duty to support municipalities. Project
Consolidate deployed technical experts to 136 municipalities – generally in rural
areas or former homelands which had the highest backlogs in basic services and were
economically depressed (Department of Provincial and Local Government, 2006a:1).
Te Development Bank of South Africa introduced a similar programme, called
Siyenza Manje, to support fnancial management and infrastructure planning. By
April 2008, Project Consolidate and Siyenza Manje deployments totalled 1,124 in 268
municipalities (Department of Provincial and Local Government, 2009:215). It was
difcult to measure the impact of these capacity-building measures. And by putting a
number to the municipalities under stress government had in efect announced that
there was a systemic crisis in local government. Since then policy reform has been
on a crisis footing. In practice, these interventions did little to improve the fnancial
performance of municipalities, which is perhaps the most important indicator of the
health of local government. In his audit report for 2009/2010, the Auditor-General
found that despite the ‘abundance of technical tools to support municipalities’ the
results were only ‘fractionally better than the previous year’ (Auditor-General, 2011a;
for the full report see Auditor-General, 2011b).
The Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act (Act No. 13 of 2005)
Te Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act (IGRFA) was introduced in 2005
to establish greater predictability in intergovernmental relations and to promote
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alignment of national, provincial and local plans and expenditures. Te Act addressed
three local government concerns. First, to overcome the haphazard way in which
departments had been consulting with local government, statutory membership in all
key intergovernmental forums was conferred on organised local government. Second,
the Act provided for direct representation of district executive mayors in provincial
intergovernmental forums, to promote efective executive-to-executive engagements
between these two spheres. Tird, district intergovernmental forums were established
to force cooperation between district and local executives, to overcome the tension
and competition that typifed relations between the two tiers. Te impact of the
IGFRA is hard to measure, but the institutions are established and operational, and
since 2005 relations between the ANC national government and the DA controlled
governments in the Western Cape and Cape Town have been transacted through the
Act’s machinery.
The fve-year strategic agenda for local government 2006-11
In January 2006, Cabinet adopted the Five-Year Strategic Agenda (5YSA) for the second
term of local government (2006-11), following a comprehensive review of the frst
term of local government (2000-05) (Department of Provincial and Local Government,
2006b). Te review found that the fnal phase of the transition had been too ambitious
and pointed to the worrying mismatch between national policy objectives and local
government’s capacity to implement them. Poor policy coordination, overregulation
of local government, and unsystematic support for municipalities were identifed
as contributing to municipal distress. Te review outlined three imperatives for
the next fve years (Department of Provincial and Local Government, 2006b). First
municipalities would have to improve their performance and their accountability to
communities. Second, an unprecedented national capacity-building efort would be
required to help local government to discharge its mandate. Tird, more efective
coordination of policy, and monitoring and supervision of local government were
required. Over time, the objectives of the 5YSA were systematically anchored in the
plans and operations of municipalities, provinces and national sector departments as
the guiding strategic framework. Te 5YSA would be replaced in 2009 by the Zuma
government’s turnaround strategy.
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The policy review of provincial and local government 2007-09
In January 2007, Cabinet approved a process to develop a white paper on provincial
government and review the white paper on local government (known as the policy
review of provincial and local government). Longer-term policy review was part of
the 5YSA. Later that year the ANC released a discussion document on the future of
provinces setting out three options: retaining, abolishing, or reforming the provincial
system (ANC, 2007). Te policy review began in August and the public was invited to
make written submissions on 65 policy questions (Department of Provincial and Local
Government, 2007b). Tere was widespread support for reviewing or abolishing the
two-tier system. Te policy review process in government was overtaken by events
at Polokwane in December 2007 when Mbeki lost the ANC leadership race to Zuma
and Mbeki’s subsequent resignation in 2008. Te fnal report on the policy review,
which has yet to be released to the public, was submitted to cabinet in January 2009.
In the ANC, the process survived Polokwane. Te ANC took a resolution to hold a
special summit on provincial and local government, which took place in December
2010. Te outcome was inconclusive – the ANC resolved to appoint a Presidential
Review Commission to continue the work (ANC, 2010), which by early 2012 had yet
to be appointed. Te discussion document on local government for the 2012 policy
conference, published in March, was not only poorly drafted, but largely repeats both
the Summit’s recommendation of an expert commission, the ANC’s options for reform
tabled in 2007 and the fndings of the Mbeki government’s policy review (ANC, 2012).
It provides little clarity about policy direction on provincial and local government
and adds nothing new. Te National Planning Commission’s National Development
Plan: Vision 2030, on the other hand, is a pragmatic and well-researched document.
It does not support major structural reform to provinces, but rather a ‘more focused
role for provinces’ to make the current system work more efectively (NPC, 2011:386).
It is unlikely that national government will take any major decision on the future of
the provincial system before the ANC policy conference in mid-2012 and the elective
conference in December 2012.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN CRISIS – THE ZUMA PRESIDENCY
(2009-PRESENT)
Te Zuma government ‘took ofce with the economy in recession, under enormous
pressure to combat growing job losses, but with his party wounded and divided
following Mbeki’s resignation’ (Steytler & Powell, 2010:151). Te Zuma government’s
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approach to local government refected the sense of crisis in the country. A national
turnaround of local government would be the centrepiece of the new administration’s
local government policy for the next fve years, and the platform from which the ANC
would contest the 2011 municipal elections.
The national turnaround strategy for local government
In May 2009, the Ministry of Provincial and Local Government was disbanded and
replaced by the Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Afairs (COGTA).
In his budget speech for the 2009/10 fnancial year, the new Minister repeatedly
attacked the former Minister (Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional
Afairs, 2009). Te new ministry would be the ‘choir conductor’ coordinating the system
of cooperative governance.
Te practical efect of the change in leadership was that all
existing programmes were put on hold pending a major restructuring of the department,
and fagship policies such as the Five-Year Strategic Agenda were discontinued.
Te Local Government Turnaround Strategy (TAS) emerged from COGTA’s
assessment of the state of local government in 2009 (COGTA, 2009a; COGTA, 2009c).
Te report found that while local government had contributed to democratisation,
the system as a whole was ‘showing signs of distress’ (COGTA, 2009a:2). Indicators
of this distress included ‘huge service delivery backlogs’, a breakdown in council
communication with and accountability to citizens, political interference in
administration, corruption, fraud, bad management, increasing violent service
delivery protests, factionalism in parties, and depleted municipal capacity (COGTA,
2009a:13). Tese were symptoms of deeper systemic problems in local government
and cooperative governance (COGTA, 2009a:9-10). In some cases ‘accountable
government and the rule of law had collapsed or were collapsing’ due to corruption,
profteering, and mismanagement. Te report was the most forthright admission yet
by government that local government was in a state of crisis. Following this report,
the government adopted the Turnaround Strategy for Local Government (TAS) as an
outcome in its fve-year programme of action (Presidency, 2010). All municipalities
were expected to adopt turnaround strategies as part of their IDPs. Tree key priorities
for TAS were improving access to basic services; deepening participatory democracy;
and improving fnancial management and administrative capacity.
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Improving access to basic services
Government’s goal is to achieve ‘universal access to basic services for all households
by 2014’ (COGTA, 2009b). Tere has been signifcant progress: 93 percent of the
population has access to a basic level of water – a stand pipe within 200 metres from
a dwelling (COGTA, 2011a); 73 percent of households have access to electricity; 67
percent have access to basic sanitation (a ventilated pit latrine in the dwelling); and 59
percent to once a week refuse removal (COGTA, 2009b:9). But there are major obstacles
to achieving the target. Tere are huge inter-provincial disparities, with provinces that
absorbed former homelands and rural areas well below the national average for most
services. Te population statistics on which funding for these services is calculated
are also outdated (2001 census), with the result that services are often underfunded.
In 2007, for example, it was estimated that an additional R63 billion was needed
to meet the service targets. Exponential connection rates for water and electricity
services must be achieved each year to meet the targets. For example, in 2007 it was
estimated that 500,000 new electricity connections per annum were needed, but
there was only funding available for half that amount (Department of Provincial and
Local Government, 2007a). Te backlogs in bulk infrastructure are huge; outstanding
municipal debt had grown to R62.3 billion as at 31 December 2010, and dependency
on grants has increased even in the metros (National Treasury, 2011:62).
Deepening public participation
Legislation provides many avenues for public involvement in municipal planning,
budgeting, service delivery, and performance evaluation. A variety of structures serve
this goal (IDP Forums, ward committees, and service delivery improvement forums).
Despite the existence of this formal machinery for participation, public protests have
increased in number and frequency since 1994. For example, between 2007 and 2010
the average number of protests per month was 8.73 in 2007, 9.83 in 2008, 19.18 in
2009, and 16.33 in 2010 (Jain & Powell, 2010:14).
8
Since 2010 (Karamoko, 2011:1),
... the country has witnessed unprecedented rates of violent protests. Tese fndings suggest that
there remains strong public discontent with municipal service delivery throughout South Africa
despite the appearance of relative calm.
Protests are also increasingly prone to violence (injury to persons or property
caused by protesters or the use of force by the state during protests): 42 percent of
protests in 2007, 38 percent in 2008, 44 percent in 2009 and 54 percent in the frst
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six months of 2010 involved violence of some kind (Jain & Powell 2010:14). Deputy
Minister of COGTA, Yunus Carrim, sounded an alarm in 2010 when he warned that
‘the rage of sections of the protestors and the extent of violence and destruction they
wreak’ refected ‘a far more fundamental alienation of people from our democracy. It
suggests an acute sense of marginalisation and social exclusion’ (Deputy Minister of
COGTA, 2010). It was the frst time that a government leader had publically drawn
a direct political connection between the rise in violent protests and the failure of
developmental local government.
Another kind of protest – organised – directed at local government is the
withholding of rates by some ratepayers. In towns across the country, ratepayers
associations have declared disputes with municipalities over poor service delivery,
corruption and mismanagement, withheld the payment of rates and taxes to their
municipalities in response and, in some cases, assumed the responsibility to provide
municipal services. Ratepayers associations in 70 towns have declared disputes, with
R10 million withheld by ratepayers in 35 towns (Powell et al., 2010).
9
In response to these protests, government is considering ways to improve
public participation by increasing the size of a ward committee (from 10-30 members)
and reviewing the funding model for ward councillors (COGTA, 2011a). Te response
overlooks three factors. First, the increase in protest action is an indicator that
protests have become a more efcient way for communities to express grievances and
make demands than formal avenues. Second, there is a mismatch between the public’s
low awareness of participatory structures (let alone actual participation) and the high
expectations that policy-makers have for public participation. Tird, government
has no reliable measurement of the impact that public participation has on local
governance beyond a simple head count of people attending meetings.
Improving fnancial management and administrative capacity
Te MFMA set high standards for fnancial reporting and accounting that few
municipalities meet in practice. Te Auditor-general’s report for 2009/2010 showed the
extent of the challenge, only 7 of the 237 municipalities received clean audits. Drawing
on comparable fndings from the Auditor-General’s report for 2007/08, COGTA’s state of
local government report noted the worrying state of municipal fnancial management:
54 percent of municipalities in 2007/08 received qualifed, disclaimer or adverse audit
opinions and in 45 percent of cases ‘unauthorised, fruitless and wasteful expenditure’
had led to the qualifcations (COGTA, 2009:73-74). Te TAS set 2014 as the target for
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all municipalities to attain a clean audit. Te Department’s Annual Performance Plan for
2011/2012 breaks this commitment down into annual targets for the next three years.
By 2011/12, 60 percent of municipalities are expected to attain unqualifed audits, rising
to 75 percent in 2012/13 and 100 percent in 2013/14 (COGTA, 2011b:42). In light of
the reality presented in the annual reports of the Auditor-general and COGTA’s own
report, these targets are unrealistic. COGTA faces a major political dilemma. It has set
a frm national target for clean audits but has no control over the activities that shape
audit outcomes, which are all under the full control of municipalities.
Improving the quality of municipal administration is a key priority and will
require, frstly, that competent professionals are appointed to senior management
positions and, secondly, that municipal administration is insulated from undue party
political infuence. In 2007, the National Treasury issued regulations to prescribe
general and minimum competences and qualifcations for the various classes of
senior management. Tese regulations come into full efect in 2012. Parliament also
passed the Municipal Systems Amendment Act (Act No. 7 of 2011) which, amongst
others things, prohibits ofce bearers of political parties from occupying management
positions. Te President assented to the Act on 5 July 2011 despite stif resistance
from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). Tese are important
‘supply-side’ measures, but the larger problem remains the scarcity of skills in the
economy and making local government attractive to mobile professionals.
CONCLUSION – CONTINUITY AND CHANGE, POLICY REFORM
AFTER LOCAL ELECTION 2011
Te ANC government will view the result of local election 2011 as a popular validation
for its turnaround strategy for local government, the platform from which it fought
the 2011 municipal elections. Popular support for the turnaround strategy, however,
is not enough for the strategy to succeed. Te lesson in this brief overview of local
government reform since 1994, is that policy-making is not simply a matter of getting
the ‘ideas right’ so as to ‘straighten out our practices’.
10
Te factors that will determine
whether the turnaround targets will be met are largely not under the control of national
policy-makers. Clean audits cannot be decreed from Pretoria. Insisting on clean audits
as the indicator of success also precludes government from claiming success against
more manageable short-term targets (such as graduation from disclaimer to qualifed
audits). Te question of insulating administration from party politics will also not
be decided on the merits of the recent amendments to legislation. It will depend on
whether the ANC’s will to force the issue can survive a sustained onslaught from
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Cosatu within ANC and Alliance structures. Te ruling party’s increased hold over
government policy also presents challenges for government policy-makers. First, the
ANC lacks the technical capacity that is required to make credible policy in this complex
sector. Second, it locks government policy-makers into internal party processes and
work schedules, paralysing decision-making. Tird, it makes major institutional
reforms (such as abolishing districts) an unlikely prospect, because interests are too
vested in the current system and coalitions too fragile to build a strong consensus on
major reforms.
In less than fve years government’s policy stance on local government shifted
180 degrees, from a forward looking agenda to crisis and turnaround. By couching
local government reform in the language of a systemic crisis requiring national
intervention, the Zuma government has sacrifced forward-looking strategy to crisis
management – and it is hard to demonstrate progress when reform is cast as a response
to a strategic crisis. Te announcement of failure in efect prefgures the measurement
of results. Replacing the Mbeki government’s programmes with a new strategy and at
the same time embarking on a major reorganisation of the department, meant that
COGTA was in a weak position to drive long-term reform in government. In late 2011,
Sicelo Shiceka was replaced as Minister by the relatively junior and inexperienced
Richard Baloyi. Subsequently, the Director-General, Elroy Africa, resigned. Tese
developments have left a leadership vacuum in the local government sector after the
2011 elections. Despite these shortcomings there are several important advances. Te
devolution of housing and public transport functions to larger cities refects a greater
appreciation of the importance of the built environment to growth and development.
Te announcement in COGTA’s 2011/12-budget vote that the fnancial model for local
government will be reviewed was a welcome acknowledgement that receiving only
eight percent of national revenue, local government has been underfunded all these
years. However, by January 2012 there were still no practical details of the new model
in the public domain.
Te outcome of the 2011 local elections illustrates the dichotomy that had
opened between formal local democracy and the politics of the local in South Africa,
between policy intent and local political reality. If the highest voter turnout yet, is
cause to celebrate the deepening of local democracy in our country, the persistence
of violent community protests and the rise of rates boycotts could be seen as a
complementary, perhaps more efective, way in which citizens are asserting their
voices and holding politicians accountable. In that case, what does it mean to say
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that democracy is deepening, and by what measure? From the results we could also
infer that the ANC retains its huge electoral support in the country, but also that
(outside of the Western Cape) the electorate remains unwilling to punish the ruling
party’s failures at the polls even when those failures have sparked violent protests.
Are there two separate social contracts in South Africa – with citizen-government
accountability transacted through the ruling party’s structures, as well as through
formal institutions like elections? Te introduction in 2011 of national legislation to
prevent political ofce-holders from occupying senior management positions was a
decisive intervention by national government to insulate municipal administration
from undue political interference.
11
But how will that measure fare when a post in a
municipality is the gateway to a middle-class lifestyle in a city, town or rural area and
when the informal rules of the profteer trump formal processes and the law?
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the-service-delivery-protests.html. (Accessed 11 May 2011.)
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Jain, H. & Powell, D. 2010. Trends in community protests. Local Government Bulletin 12(4):
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(Accessed 12 May 2011.)
Powell, D., May, A., Ntliziywana, P. & De Visser, J. 2010. Te withholding of property rates
and taxes in fve local municipalities. [Online.] Available from:http://www.ldphs.org.za/
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rates/Withholding%20of%20rates%2015Nov010.pdf/view. (Accessed 2 August 2011.)
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Pressley, D. 9 October 2003. Mbeki: South Africa has two economies. News24. [Online.]
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20031009. (Accessed 12 May 2011.)
Rademan v Moqhaka Municipality and others 2011 SCA Case No: 173/11.
Steytler, N. & De Visser, J. 2009. Local government law of South Africa. Durban: LexisNexis.
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government in South Africa. L’Europa en formation 358(Winter): 149-172.
NOTES
1 South African policy-makers do not use the expression ‘policy reform’ in ofcial documents.
Nevertheless it is a useful analytical category, and in this chapter the Organization of Economic
Cooperation and Development’s (OECD, 2011) defnition is used: policy reform is ‘a process
in which changes are made to the formal “rules of the game” – including laws, regulations and
institutions – to address a problem or achieve a goal.’
2 In the late 1980s there had been a series of low-intensity contacts between civics and town
councils to end boycotts. For a discussion of these initiatives, see Heymans and Tötemeyer, 1988.
3 Te Local Government Negotiating Forum was established on 22 March 1993. ‘Te Forum was
composed of 60 representatives half of them drawn from statutory bodies and the other half from
non-statutory bodies (principally the South African National Civic Association which was aligned
to the ANC’ (Steytler & De Visser, 2009aras 1-10). For a detailed account of the local political
negotiations see Cloete, 1994:294.
4 Te Local Government Transition Act No. 209 of 1993.
5 Act 75 of 1988, repealed by Act 62 of 1996. Municipal regulations on minimum competency
requirements, Gazette No. 29967, 15 June 2007.
6 James Manor coined this phrase in an unpublished critique of the White Paper written in the late
1990s.
7 For example, the DPLG report showed that by December 2001 36 percent had insufcient
accommodation, 32 percent lacked basic ofce equipment (telephones, faxes, etc.), only 31
percent had a delegation framework, 33 percent had completed fnancial delegations, and 46
percent had an amalgamation plan.
8 Te article is a summary of the main fndings of Jain, H. 2010. Community protests in South Africa:
Trends, analysis and explanation, available from:http://www.ldphs.org.za.
9 Tis data was supplied by National Taxpayers Union and is current as of November 2010. Data
after that date was not available to the author at the time of writing and could not be obtained
from the NTO website, which has not been operational for some time. Generally, the associations
declare disputes in terms of section 102 of the Municipal Systems Act No. 32 of 2000, which
provides for the exemption of an individual ratepayer from the enforcement by the municipality
of its debt collection and credit control policies where a dispute is declared on a specifc amount.
Tat section, however, does not create a general right to withhold payment. In Rademan v
Moqhaka Municipality and others 2011 SCA Case No: 173/11 the Supreme Court of Appeal held
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that a municipality has the right to disconnect without a court order the electricity supply to a
rate-payer who is in default.
10 Stanley Fish quoted in Bauerlein, 2011.
11 Local Government: Municipal Systems Amendment Act No. 7 of 2011.
doc_817700679.pdf
Description tell about imperfect transition local government reform in south africa 1994 2012.
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Local government is a mirror of the larger political and economic forces, cleavages and
problems that are shaping South African society. It is these deeper fault lines in society,
rather than the Zuma government’s turnaround strategy or the 2011 local elections result,
which will drive future policy and determine its efects. Tis is the frst lesson of local
government reform in all four terms of national government examined in this chapter.
In each term, national policy reforms were moulded by shifting political and economic
circumstances and larger national interests, not simply by the unfolding logic of the original
blueprint for local government in the 1998 white paper. Te outcome of eighteen years
of policy reform, however, was not the new society imagined in the white paper, but an
imperfect transition that is local government today: where peaceful electoral competition
coexists with violent public protests, racial group areas endure in fact, even if not in law,
pockets of good governance survive amidst systemic corruption and mismanagement, and
national policy goals consistently exceed local government’s capacity to deliver them and
the economy’s skills base. Te second lesson fows from that reality – due to the fact that the
problems of local government are so nested in the broader problems of our society, further
local government policy reform and sweeping national turnaround strategies are likely to
have imperfect impacts on ‘the problem of local government’ in South Africa.
INTRODUCTION
Te Mandela government’s white paper on local government ofered a new vision of
post-apartheid society, embodied in the concept of developmental local government
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Imperfect transition – local
government reform in South Africa
1994-2012
Derek Powell
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(Ministry of Constitutional Development and Provincial Afairs, 1998). Te territory of
the country would be divided into municipalities, each governed by an elected municipal
council. Municipalities would integrate racially divided group areas under a single local
authority and a common tax base. Local development plans would guide programmes of
national reconstruction and development. Citizens would partner with municipalities to
build non-racial communities. Municipalities would redistribute expenditure to service
delivery in poor black communities. By the time that implementation began in 2000 the
force of this transformative vision was already spent – overtaken by hard political and
economic realities, overwhelmed by the scale of institutional changes involved and the
distance between the ideal and delivering practical change. Tis chapter examines the
major local government policy reforms
1
in the four terms of national government since
1994, analysing key factors that have informed policy and shaped its efects, concluding
with a perspective from an early 2012 vantage point on the prospects for policy reform
following the 2011 local elections.
Te chapter’s central argument is that in the four terms of national government,
local government reforms were not unfolding episodes in a continuous, uninterrupted
process of implementing the white paper’s vision for developmental local government.
Policy and local institutions were shaped less by original design than by changing
political and economic realities in the country, competing national policy objectives,
often by strategic miscalculations, and more lately by competition for power in
the ANC.
Te outcome of eighteen years of local government reform was not the
new society imagined in the white paper, but an imperfect transition that is local
government today: Formal electoral competition coexists with increasingly violent
public protests between elections. Pockets of performance endure amidst systemic
corruption and mismanagement. And the expectations of policy-makers continually
exceed local delivery capacity and the skills base of the economy. Local government
is a refection of South African society, and it is the deeper fault lines in our society
which have consistently shaped the design and impact of policy. Te ANC will interpret
the result of the 2011 election as popular support for its turnaround strategy for
local government, but the factors impacting on local government efectiveness are
substantially beyond the control of policy-makers and unable to be reversed through
sweeping policy solutions.
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Te chapter now assesses the serial eforts of South Africa’s successive democratic
governments to close the persistent gap between the ideals of local government
transformation and realised turnaround on the ground.
DEVELOPMENTAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT – THE MANDELA
GOVERNMENT OF NATIONAL UNITY (1994-99)
Te process to formulate the white paper intersected with three major developments in
the country, each of which left an imprint on local government policy and institutions.
First, the Constitutional Assembly was writing the country’s new constitution. In 1996
local government graduated from a statutory institution to a full sphere of government
with a broad developmental mandate. Second, following the frst democratic elections
in 1994, the ANC-led government of national unity (GNU) took ofce with a strong
mandate from the electorate to rebuild and develop the country. Local government was
to play a lead role in reducing poverty, providing services to meet basic needs. Tird, to
grow the economy, government adopted a macro-economic framework in 1996 which
introduced fscal austerity measures. Tereafter, local government reforms would be
disciplined by fscal reform goals, budget contraction and tighter treasury controls.
Te white paper’s vision for local government was thus conceived in a context defned
by competing policy objectives. Tis section examines the impact this has had on the
original policy vision of local government.
Origin of developmental local government in the constitutional negotiations
Te genealogy of developmental local government can be traced back to the civic
struggles against apartheid of the 1980s. A powerful civic movement had emerged
in response to the appalling conditions in black townships and the government’s
attempts to establish black local authorities in townships without conceding full
citizenship rights to blacks. Te civic struggles linked local grievances to the cause of
national liberation. After 1990, civics and local authorities in towns and cities across
the country began to negotiate local settlements to rent and service boycotts and
the amalgamation of racial local authorities.
2
Tese initiatives established the place
of local actors at the national negotiating table, the role of local government under
the democratic order, and the founding concepts of developmental local government
(such as ‘one city one tax base’ and phased-in transition). When the fnal national
negotiations process got underway in 1993, local actors negotiated a new democratic
dispensation for local government in the Local Government Negotiating Forum
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(LGNF).
3
One of the outcomes of the LGNF was the Local Government Transition Act
of 1993 (LGTA) which outlined the pathway for the transition to full local democracy.
4
Te LGTA set out three phases for local government transition. Te frst,
pre-interim phase (1993-1995) started with the negotiated settlement in 1993 and
concluded with the election of transitional local councils in 1995/96. Local governments
of unity were established and consensus seeking was promoted through measures such
as a two-thirds majority vote to adopt the budget and proportional representation on
the executive committee (Steytler & De Visser, 2009
aras 1-13). Te Act providedfor provincial commissions to demarcate the boundaries of the transitional urban,
rural and metropolitan municipalities, which led to the creation of 842 municipalities
governed by transitional councils elected in 1995/6. Te elections inaugurated the
second, interim phase (1995-2000), which coincided with the term of the Mandela
government and the adoption of the new constitution in 1996 and concluded with
the frst fully democratic local elections in 2000, which would launch the third and
fnal phase.
The reconstruction and development programme (RDP)
Te RDP was the ANC’s vision for social justice after apartheid and the guiding
framework for government policy in the frst term (ANC, 1994). Te RDP gave local
government an expansive mandate to meet basic needs and promote people-centred
government and outlined the key principles of democratic local government – such as
a single tax base, participatory government, cross-subsidisation of service delivery,
and writing of of the debts accrued by black local authorities. Te white paper would
consolidate the RDP principles into a vision for developmental local government.
Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR)
GEAR was adopted in 1996 to boost economic growth to 6 percent, the minimum
rate needed to create jobs, extend service delivery and overcome inequality. GEAR
introduced short-term austerity, including defcit reduction, budget reprioritisation,
and stronger state coordination of fscal and budget policy (Ministry of Finance, 1996).
GEAR was the guiding framework for a comprehensive process to reform the budget
process, the intergovernmental fscal system, fnancial management and accounting
practices which rolled out over the next fve years. Various streams of capital payments
to municipalities were consolidated into the Consolidated Municipal Infrastructure
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Programme in 1996. Te local government equitable share formula was introduced in
1998 to subsidise a package of basic municipal services to indigent households. Tese
major reforms to local government fnances were introduced contemporaneously with
the drafting of the white paper.
The white paper and legislation
Te white paper defned developmental local government as (Ministry of Constitutional
Development and Provincial Afairs, 1998:17):
... local government committed to working with citizens and groups within the community to
fnd sustainable ways to meet their social, economic and material needs and improve the quality
of their lives.
In 1998 the Municipal Demarcation Act (Act No. 27 of 1998) and the Municipal
Structures Act (Act No. 117 of 1998) were promulgated to give territorial and
structural efect to the policy. Te former Act created a demarcation board to determine
the boundaries of the new municipalities, 284 municipalities were eventually
established. Te latter provided for the structural, political and functional institutions
for metropolitan, district and local municipalities, with the latter two tiers sharing
jurisdiction over rural areas.
From the start, local government policy and institutions were imprinted by
competing national objectives. First, the constitution and RDP gave local government
a broad mandate to meet basic needs and redistribute capital spending to poor
communities, the central ideas behind municipal integrated development planning
and district-led redistribution. Second, intergovernmental fscal policy, however,
would now consistently discipline local government policy in line with macro-economic
goals. In practice this meant a contraction of expenditure on service delivery and
stronger central control over all policy-making, progressively shifting the real levers of
policy control from the Department of Constitutional Developmental to the National
Treasury. Tird, by the time the white paper was adopted it was already accepted that
redistribution would be a national, not a local, responsibility, and the abolition of the
regional services council levy was on the cards (abolished in 2003). In efect, these
policies knocked of one of the main rationales for district government and its only
source of redistributable income. Fourth, the design of the local government equitable
share was predicated on the assumption that local government raised 90 percent of its
own revenue and only 10 percent would be subsidised through the intergovernmental
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grant system (Department of Finance, 1998:23). Tis resulted in the underfunding of
municipal service delivery, an issue that emerged sharply at the ANC’s debriefng after
the 2011 elections. Fifth, the repeal in 1996 of the Profession of Towns Clerks Act,
which had regulated the appointment of qualifed professionals as municipal managers,
efectively left the qualifcations and competences of municipal managers unregulated
until the National Treasury introduced regulations in 2007.
5
Te net efect of these
developments was that at the same time that municipal boundaries were expanding
to include under-serviced rural populations and townships and national policy was
giving local government a vast developmental mandate, the new sphere was being
asked ‘to do more with less resources’ and a crumbling skills base.
6
ESTABLISHING DEVELOPMENTAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT – THE
FIRST MBEKI GOVERNMENT (1999-2004)
Te frst elections under the new system took place in 2000 at the start of the frst
Mbeki government, the fnal phase of the local government transition. Te Department
of Provincial and Local Government replaced the Department of Constitutional
Development. Two main priorities occupied the term. Te frst was establishing the
new municipalities and inducting the new councils. Government planners divided the
fnal phase into three periods: Two years were set aside for establishment (2000-02),
followed by a two-year period of consolidating the new systems (2002-05) and the
sustainability phase (2005 onwards), by which time the new systems were expected
to be fully operational. By 2001 it was clear that the transition timeline was seriously
fawed. Against all of the main indicators, the establishment process was slow. Te
institutional framework for local government was also incomplete (Department of
Provincial and Local Government, 2001).
7
Te second priority was completing the policy, legislative, and regulatory
frame works for municipal planning, service delivery, fnances and administration.
In 2001 government adopted a policy of providing a package of free basic services
(FBS) in water, electricity, sanitation and refuse services to all citizens, targeting poor
households. National subsidies to local government for basic services would increase
over the next 10 years. However, at the time FBS was introduced, there was no fnal
division of the functional responsibility for these services between districts and locals
(only fnalised in 2003), and major restructuring was involved in transferring water
schemes and staf from the water sector to local government.
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Te legislative framework was completed with the passage of the Municipal
Systems Act (Act No. 32 of 2000), regulating planning, service delivery, performance
monitoring and public participation; the Municipal Finance Management Act (Act No.
56 of 2003), regulating fnancial management, accounting, supply-chain management,
reporting and budgeting; the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework
Act (Act No. 41 of 2003), providing for relations between traditional leadership and
municipalities; and the Municipal Property Rates Act (Act No. 6 of 2004), regulating
property evaluations and taxing. Te intergovernmental grant system was also
undergoing major reform, leading to the phased-in introduction of the Municipal
Infrastructure Grant in 2003. Perhaps the most important of these reforms was
the fnance management legislation, which introduced international standards for
fnancial management in all municipalities, and progressively consolidated National
Treasury control over local government policy.
Te contradictions in local government policy had deepened under the frst
Mbeki government. National policy had created heightened expectations about local
government’s contribution to poverty relief, setting frm targets for universal access
to basic services. But municipalities were still struggling with basic problems of
establishment, and the policy, legislative and fscal frameworks regulating municipal
systems were yet to be completed.
INCLUSIVE GROWTH AND POVERTY REDUCTION – THE SECOND
MBEKI GOVERNMENT (2004-09)
Te central objective of the second Mbeki government was economic growth of 6
percent and a fairer distribution of its benefts (Presidency, 2004:33-34).
A dangerous
gap had opened between what Mbeki began to call the frst and second economies
– the elite on top, the poor masses without economic hope at the bottom, and no
‘connecting staircase’ between the two economies (Pressley, 9 October 2003). Local
government was conceptualised as an important bridge. Improved capital expenditure
in the urban built environment (transport, energy, FIFA World Cup stadia) would
crowd in private sector investment, boosting growth in the frst economy and hence
job creation. Municipal expenditure on basic needs, as part of a wider social safety
net for the poor, would help to combat poverty in the second economy. But local
government lacked the engineering, planning, fnancial and project management
skills that were essential to fulfl these tasks. Te economy was not producing these
scarce skills (Presidency, 2008). Special short-term national measures were needed to
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boost the municipal skills base. Government had miscalculated the disastrous impacts
of transformation on municipal skills.
Local government reform had three main objectives during the term: deploying
expertise to skills-depleted municipalities (known as Project Consolidate), stronger
coordination of public spending on growth and fghting poverty, through more
centralised intergovernmental relations (the Intergovernmental Relations Framework
Act No. 13 of 2005) and a new strategic framework for local government (the Five Year
Strategic Agenda, including long-term policy review).
Project Consolidate
Project Consolidate was a two-year national intervention (2004-06) to support
municipalities lacking the expertise to discharge their mandate to provide basic
services. It also sought to address the fact that national and provincial departments
were not fulflling their constitutional duty to support municipalities. Project
Consolidate deployed technical experts to 136 municipalities – generally in rural
areas or former homelands which had the highest backlogs in basic services and were
economically depressed (Department of Provincial and Local Government, 2006a:1).
Te Development Bank of South Africa introduced a similar programme, called
Siyenza Manje, to support fnancial management and infrastructure planning. By
April 2008, Project Consolidate and Siyenza Manje deployments totalled 1,124 in 268
municipalities (Department of Provincial and Local Government, 2009:215). It was
difcult to measure the impact of these capacity-building measures. And by putting a
number to the municipalities under stress government had in efect announced that
there was a systemic crisis in local government. Since then policy reform has been
on a crisis footing. In practice, these interventions did little to improve the fnancial
performance of municipalities, which is perhaps the most important indicator of the
health of local government. In his audit report for 2009/2010, the Auditor-General
found that despite the ‘abundance of technical tools to support municipalities’ the
results were only ‘fractionally better than the previous year’ (Auditor-General, 2011a;
for the full report see Auditor-General, 2011b).
The Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act (Act No. 13 of 2005)
Te Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act (IGRFA) was introduced in 2005
to establish greater predictability in intergovernmental relations and to promote
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alignment of national, provincial and local plans and expenditures. Te Act addressed
three local government concerns. First, to overcome the haphazard way in which
departments had been consulting with local government, statutory membership in all
key intergovernmental forums was conferred on organised local government. Second,
the Act provided for direct representation of district executive mayors in provincial
intergovernmental forums, to promote efective executive-to-executive engagements
between these two spheres. Tird, district intergovernmental forums were established
to force cooperation between district and local executives, to overcome the tension
and competition that typifed relations between the two tiers. Te impact of the
IGFRA is hard to measure, but the institutions are established and operational, and
since 2005 relations between the ANC national government and the DA controlled
governments in the Western Cape and Cape Town have been transacted through the
Act’s machinery.
The fve-year strategic agenda for local government 2006-11
In January 2006, Cabinet adopted the Five-Year Strategic Agenda (5YSA) for the second
term of local government (2006-11), following a comprehensive review of the frst
term of local government (2000-05) (Department of Provincial and Local Government,
2006b). Te review found that the fnal phase of the transition had been too ambitious
and pointed to the worrying mismatch between national policy objectives and local
government’s capacity to implement them. Poor policy coordination, overregulation
of local government, and unsystematic support for municipalities were identifed
as contributing to municipal distress. Te review outlined three imperatives for
the next fve years (Department of Provincial and Local Government, 2006b). First
municipalities would have to improve their performance and their accountability to
communities. Second, an unprecedented national capacity-building efort would be
required to help local government to discharge its mandate. Tird, more efective
coordination of policy, and monitoring and supervision of local government were
required. Over time, the objectives of the 5YSA were systematically anchored in the
plans and operations of municipalities, provinces and national sector departments as
the guiding strategic framework. Te 5YSA would be replaced in 2009 by the Zuma
government’s turnaround strategy.
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The policy review of provincial and local government 2007-09
In January 2007, Cabinet approved a process to develop a white paper on provincial
government and review the white paper on local government (known as the policy
review of provincial and local government). Longer-term policy review was part of
the 5YSA. Later that year the ANC released a discussion document on the future of
provinces setting out three options: retaining, abolishing, or reforming the provincial
system (ANC, 2007). Te policy review began in August and the public was invited to
make written submissions on 65 policy questions (Department of Provincial and Local
Government, 2007b). Tere was widespread support for reviewing or abolishing the
two-tier system. Te policy review process in government was overtaken by events
at Polokwane in December 2007 when Mbeki lost the ANC leadership race to Zuma
and Mbeki’s subsequent resignation in 2008. Te fnal report on the policy review,
which has yet to be released to the public, was submitted to cabinet in January 2009.
In the ANC, the process survived Polokwane. Te ANC took a resolution to hold a
special summit on provincial and local government, which took place in December
2010. Te outcome was inconclusive – the ANC resolved to appoint a Presidential
Review Commission to continue the work (ANC, 2010), which by early 2012 had yet
to be appointed. Te discussion document on local government for the 2012 policy
conference, published in March, was not only poorly drafted, but largely repeats both
the Summit’s recommendation of an expert commission, the ANC’s options for reform
tabled in 2007 and the fndings of the Mbeki government’s policy review (ANC, 2012).
It provides little clarity about policy direction on provincial and local government
and adds nothing new. Te National Planning Commission’s National Development
Plan: Vision 2030, on the other hand, is a pragmatic and well-researched document.
It does not support major structural reform to provinces, but rather a ‘more focused
role for provinces’ to make the current system work more efectively (NPC, 2011:386).
It is unlikely that national government will take any major decision on the future of
the provincial system before the ANC policy conference in mid-2012 and the elective
conference in December 2012.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN CRISIS – THE ZUMA PRESIDENCY
(2009-PRESENT)
Te Zuma government ‘took ofce with the economy in recession, under enormous
pressure to combat growing job losses, but with his party wounded and divided
following Mbeki’s resignation’ (Steytler & Powell, 2010:151). Te Zuma government’s
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approach to local government refected the sense of crisis in the country. A national
turnaround of local government would be the centrepiece of the new administration’s
local government policy for the next fve years, and the platform from which the ANC
would contest the 2011 municipal elections.
The national turnaround strategy for local government
In May 2009, the Ministry of Provincial and Local Government was disbanded and
replaced by the Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Afairs (COGTA).
In his budget speech for the 2009/10 fnancial year, the new Minister repeatedly
attacked the former Minister (Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional
Afairs, 2009). Te new ministry would be the ‘choir conductor’ coordinating the system
of cooperative governance.
Te practical efect of the change in leadership was that all
existing programmes were put on hold pending a major restructuring of the department,
and fagship policies such as the Five-Year Strategic Agenda were discontinued.
Te Local Government Turnaround Strategy (TAS) emerged from COGTA’s
assessment of the state of local government in 2009 (COGTA, 2009a; COGTA, 2009c).
Te report found that while local government had contributed to democratisation,
the system as a whole was ‘showing signs of distress’ (COGTA, 2009a:2). Indicators
of this distress included ‘huge service delivery backlogs’, a breakdown in council
communication with and accountability to citizens, political interference in
administration, corruption, fraud, bad management, increasing violent service
delivery protests, factionalism in parties, and depleted municipal capacity (COGTA,
2009a:13). Tese were symptoms of deeper systemic problems in local government
and cooperative governance (COGTA, 2009a:9-10). In some cases ‘accountable
government and the rule of law had collapsed or were collapsing’ due to corruption,
profteering, and mismanagement. Te report was the most forthright admission yet
by government that local government was in a state of crisis. Following this report,
the government adopted the Turnaround Strategy for Local Government (TAS) as an
outcome in its fve-year programme of action (Presidency, 2010). All municipalities
were expected to adopt turnaround strategies as part of their IDPs. Tree key priorities
for TAS were improving access to basic services; deepening participatory democracy;
and improving fnancial management and administrative capacity.
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Improving access to basic services
Government’s goal is to achieve ‘universal access to basic services for all households
by 2014’ (COGTA, 2009b). Tere has been signifcant progress: 93 percent of the
population has access to a basic level of water – a stand pipe within 200 metres from
a dwelling (COGTA, 2011a); 73 percent of households have access to electricity; 67
percent have access to basic sanitation (a ventilated pit latrine in the dwelling); and 59
percent to once a week refuse removal (COGTA, 2009b:9). But there are major obstacles
to achieving the target. Tere are huge inter-provincial disparities, with provinces that
absorbed former homelands and rural areas well below the national average for most
services. Te population statistics on which funding for these services is calculated
are also outdated (2001 census), with the result that services are often underfunded.
In 2007, for example, it was estimated that an additional R63 billion was needed
to meet the service targets. Exponential connection rates for water and electricity
services must be achieved each year to meet the targets. For example, in 2007 it was
estimated that 500,000 new electricity connections per annum were needed, but
there was only funding available for half that amount (Department of Provincial and
Local Government, 2007a). Te backlogs in bulk infrastructure are huge; outstanding
municipal debt had grown to R62.3 billion as at 31 December 2010, and dependency
on grants has increased even in the metros (National Treasury, 2011:62).
Deepening public participation
Legislation provides many avenues for public involvement in municipal planning,
budgeting, service delivery, and performance evaluation. A variety of structures serve
this goal (IDP Forums, ward committees, and service delivery improvement forums).
Despite the existence of this formal machinery for participation, public protests have
increased in number and frequency since 1994. For example, between 2007 and 2010
the average number of protests per month was 8.73 in 2007, 9.83 in 2008, 19.18 in
2009, and 16.33 in 2010 (Jain & Powell, 2010:14).
8
Since 2010 (Karamoko, 2011:1),
... the country has witnessed unprecedented rates of violent protests. Tese fndings suggest that
there remains strong public discontent with municipal service delivery throughout South Africa
despite the appearance of relative calm.
Protests are also increasingly prone to violence (injury to persons or property
caused by protesters or the use of force by the state during protests): 42 percent of
protests in 2007, 38 percent in 2008, 44 percent in 2009 and 54 percent in the frst
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six months of 2010 involved violence of some kind (Jain & Powell 2010:14). Deputy
Minister of COGTA, Yunus Carrim, sounded an alarm in 2010 when he warned that
‘the rage of sections of the protestors and the extent of violence and destruction they
wreak’ refected ‘a far more fundamental alienation of people from our democracy. It
suggests an acute sense of marginalisation and social exclusion’ (Deputy Minister of
COGTA, 2010). It was the frst time that a government leader had publically drawn
a direct political connection between the rise in violent protests and the failure of
developmental local government.
Another kind of protest – organised – directed at local government is the
withholding of rates by some ratepayers. In towns across the country, ratepayers
associations have declared disputes with municipalities over poor service delivery,
corruption and mismanagement, withheld the payment of rates and taxes to their
municipalities in response and, in some cases, assumed the responsibility to provide
municipal services. Ratepayers associations in 70 towns have declared disputes, with
R10 million withheld by ratepayers in 35 towns (Powell et al., 2010).
9
In response to these protests, government is considering ways to improve
public participation by increasing the size of a ward committee (from 10-30 members)
and reviewing the funding model for ward councillors (COGTA, 2011a). Te response
overlooks three factors. First, the increase in protest action is an indicator that
protests have become a more efcient way for communities to express grievances and
make demands than formal avenues. Second, there is a mismatch between the public’s
low awareness of participatory structures (let alone actual participation) and the high
expectations that policy-makers have for public participation. Tird, government
has no reliable measurement of the impact that public participation has on local
governance beyond a simple head count of people attending meetings.
Improving fnancial management and administrative capacity
Te MFMA set high standards for fnancial reporting and accounting that few
municipalities meet in practice. Te Auditor-general’s report for 2009/2010 showed the
extent of the challenge, only 7 of the 237 municipalities received clean audits. Drawing
on comparable fndings from the Auditor-General’s report for 2007/08, COGTA’s state of
local government report noted the worrying state of municipal fnancial management:
54 percent of municipalities in 2007/08 received qualifed, disclaimer or adverse audit
opinions and in 45 percent of cases ‘unauthorised, fruitless and wasteful expenditure’
had led to the qualifcations (COGTA, 2009:73-74). Te TAS set 2014 as the target for
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all municipalities to attain a clean audit. Te Department’s Annual Performance Plan for
2011/2012 breaks this commitment down into annual targets for the next three years.
By 2011/12, 60 percent of municipalities are expected to attain unqualifed audits, rising
to 75 percent in 2012/13 and 100 percent in 2013/14 (COGTA, 2011b:42). In light of
the reality presented in the annual reports of the Auditor-general and COGTA’s own
report, these targets are unrealistic. COGTA faces a major political dilemma. It has set
a frm national target for clean audits but has no control over the activities that shape
audit outcomes, which are all under the full control of municipalities.
Improving the quality of municipal administration is a key priority and will
require, frstly, that competent professionals are appointed to senior management
positions and, secondly, that municipal administration is insulated from undue party
political infuence. In 2007, the National Treasury issued regulations to prescribe
general and minimum competences and qualifcations for the various classes of
senior management. Tese regulations come into full efect in 2012. Parliament also
passed the Municipal Systems Amendment Act (Act No. 7 of 2011) which, amongst
others things, prohibits ofce bearers of political parties from occupying management
positions. Te President assented to the Act on 5 July 2011 despite stif resistance
from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). Tese are important
‘supply-side’ measures, but the larger problem remains the scarcity of skills in the
economy and making local government attractive to mobile professionals.
CONCLUSION – CONTINUITY AND CHANGE, POLICY REFORM
AFTER LOCAL ELECTION 2011
Te ANC government will view the result of local election 2011 as a popular validation
for its turnaround strategy for local government, the platform from which it fought
the 2011 municipal elections. Popular support for the turnaround strategy, however,
is not enough for the strategy to succeed. Te lesson in this brief overview of local
government reform since 1994, is that policy-making is not simply a matter of getting
the ‘ideas right’ so as to ‘straighten out our practices’.
10
Te factors that will determine
whether the turnaround targets will be met are largely not under the control of national
policy-makers. Clean audits cannot be decreed from Pretoria. Insisting on clean audits
as the indicator of success also precludes government from claiming success against
more manageable short-term targets (such as graduation from disclaimer to qualifed
audits). Te question of insulating administration from party politics will also not
be decided on the merits of the recent amendments to legislation. It will depend on
whether the ANC’s will to force the issue can survive a sustained onslaught from
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Cosatu within ANC and Alliance structures. Te ruling party’s increased hold over
government policy also presents challenges for government policy-makers. First, the
ANC lacks the technical capacity that is required to make credible policy in this complex
sector. Second, it locks government policy-makers into internal party processes and
work schedules, paralysing decision-making. Tird, it makes major institutional
reforms (such as abolishing districts) an unlikely prospect, because interests are too
vested in the current system and coalitions too fragile to build a strong consensus on
major reforms.
In less than fve years government’s policy stance on local government shifted
180 degrees, from a forward looking agenda to crisis and turnaround. By couching
local government reform in the language of a systemic crisis requiring national
intervention, the Zuma government has sacrifced forward-looking strategy to crisis
management – and it is hard to demonstrate progress when reform is cast as a response
to a strategic crisis. Te announcement of failure in efect prefgures the measurement
of results. Replacing the Mbeki government’s programmes with a new strategy and at
the same time embarking on a major reorganisation of the department, meant that
COGTA was in a weak position to drive long-term reform in government. In late 2011,
Sicelo Shiceka was replaced as Minister by the relatively junior and inexperienced
Richard Baloyi. Subsequently, the Director-General, Elroy Africa, resigned. Tese
developments have left a leadership vacuum in the local government sector after the
2011 elections. Despite these shortcomings there are several important advances. Te
devolution of housing and public transport functions to larger cities refects a greater
appreciation of the importance of the built environment to growth and development.
Te announcement in COGTA’s 2011/12-budget vote that the fnancial model for local
government will be reviewed was a welcome acknowledgement that receiving only
eight percent of national revenue, local government has been underfunded all these
years. However, by January 2012 there were still no practical details of the new model
in the public domain.
Te outcome of the 2011 local elections illustrates the dichotomy that had
opened between formal local democracy and the politics of the local in South Africa,
between policy intent and local political reality. If the highest voter turnout yet, is
cause to celebrate the deepening of local democracy in our country, the persistence
of violent community protests and the rise of rates boycotts could be seen as a
complementary, perhaps more efective, way in which citizens are asserting their
voices and holding politicians accountable. In that case, what does it mean to say
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that democracy is deepening, and by what measure? From the results we could also
infer that the ANC retains its huge electoral support in the country, but also that
(outside of the Western Cape) the electorate remains unwilling to punish the ruling
party’s failures at the polls even when those failures have sparked violent protests.
Are there two separate social contracts in South Africa – with citizen-government
accountability transacted through the ruling party’s structures, as well as through
formal institutions like elections? Te introduction in 2011 of national legislation to
prevent political ofce-holders from occupying senior management positions was a
decisive intervention by national government to insulate municipal administration
from undue political interference.
11
But how will that measure fare when a post in a
municipality is the gateway to a middle-class lifestyle in a city, town or rural area and
when the informal rules of the profteer trump formal processes and the law?
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NOTES
1 South African policy-makers do not use the expression ‘policy reform’ in ofcial documents.
Nevertheless it is a useful analytical category, and in this chapter the Organization of Economic
Cooperation and Development’s (OECD, 2011) defnition is used: policy reform is ‘a process
in which changes are made to the formal “rules of the game” – including laws, regulations and
institutions – to address a problem or achieve a goal.’
2 In the late 1980s there had been a series of low-intensity contacts between civics and town
councils to end boycotts. For a discussion of these initiatives, see Heymans and Tötemeyer, 1988.
3 Te Local Government Negotiating Forum was established on 22 March 1993. ‘Te Forum was
composed of 60 representatives half of them drawn from statutory bodies and the other half from
non-statutory bodies (principally the South African National Civic Association which was aligned
to the ANC’ (Steytler & De Visser, 2009
aras 1-10). For a detailed account of the local politicalnegotiations see Cloete, 1994:294.
4 Te Local Government Transition Act No. 209 of 1993.
5 Act 75 of 1988, repealed by Act 62 of 1996. Municipal regulations on minimum competency
requirements, Gazette No. 29967, 15 June 2007.
6 James Manor coined this phrase in an unpublished critique of the White Paper written in the late
1990s.
7 For example, the DPLG report showed that by December 2001 36 percent had insufcient
accommodation, 32 percent lacked basic ofce equipment (telephones, faxes, etc.), only 31
percent had a delegation framework, 33 percent had completed fnancial delegations, and 46
percent had an amalgamation plan.
8 Te article is a summary of the main fndings of Jain, H. 2010. Community protests in South Africa:
Trends, analysis and explanation, available from:http://www.ldphs.org.za.
9 Tis data was supplied by National Taxpayers Union and is current as of November 2010. Data
after that date was not available to the author at the time of writing and could not be obtained
from the NTO website, which has not been operational for some time. Generally, the associations
declare disputes in terms of section 102 of the Municipal Systems Act No. 32 of 2000, which
provides for the exemption of an individual ratepayer from the enforcement by the municipality
of its debt collection and credit control policies where a dispute is declared on a specifc amount.
Tat section, however, does not create a general right to withhold payment. In Rademan v
Moqhaka Municipality and others 2011 SCA Case No: 173/11 the Supreme Court of Appeal held
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that a municipality has the right to disconnect without a court order the electricity supply to a
rate-payer who is in default.
10 Stanley Fish quoted in Bauerlein, 2011.
11 Local Government: Municipal Systems Amendment Act No. 7 of 2011.
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