Citizens are better served with provincial governments

This is not a good time to insist that we need elected provincial governments. But, despite the mood of these times, we do need them if we want to make it more likely that the people control what the government does to and for them.

The national government’s decision to place the entire North West government under its administration, the first time this has happened to a province, won’t trigger much criticism: the North West government is widely seen as a place for politicians who look after themselves, not the province’s citizens. And the message it sends – that people are better off being governed by officials and technicians than by an elected provincial government – will also please the many voices who see the provinces as a barrier to better governing.

For government strategists and more than a few voices outside government, provinces are a den of inefficiency, greed and waste, and scrapping them would make it a lot easier to govern well. But, while painting all provincial governments this way might seem to make sense if we look at North West, some have at times done better at serving citizens than central government.

When national government was blocking HIV and AIDS treatment for people who desperately needed it, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape did what they could to make it available. It is the Gauteng government, not national, that has stressed the need to link township economies to the mainstream.

Those who want the provinces gone also ignore an important reality — that, whether or not provincial governments are elected, officials will still be needed in the provinces. If national government takes over, those officials will no longer be controlled by an elected government in the province that is directly responsible to its voters. This would make it harder to get officials to do what the people want them to do.

But isn’t this one of those nice textbook arguments that look great in theory but don’t work in practice? Are provincial residents not at the mercy of patronage politicians who ignore their needs even though they are elected?

North West seems to illustrate this. Despite election results that show citizens want the provincial government gone, the premier and his faction can stay in office because ANC politics allow this. Even if national government can remove them from office, it may not stop them running the provincial ANC and using this to get their way. Surely a national government takeover is the only way out?

Well, no. North West does not show that elected provincial governments can get away with not doing what voters want — it shows the opposite. As this column has pointed out, a key reason why North West has become a crisis zone for the ANC is that voters have done exactly what the theory says they can do. They have used their votes to signal that they don’t want a government that does not serve them.

If the ANC chooses to ignore this message and allows the current leadership to carry on in the same way, voters may send it a louder signal by rejecting the ANC provincial government at the polls.

They will not be able to do this if elected provincial governments go, or if their province is controlled by unelected administrators, not elected politicians. Far from saving them, the national government’s decision threatens to deprive them of the only weapon they have.

North West shows how badly citizens need their vote in the provinces. The answer to provincial governments is to ensure that citizens have more of the power they need to hold politicians and officials to account, not to take away their most important lever.