Rotten municipalities are killing the future
Jimmy Mohlala, speaker of the Mbombela municipality in Mpumalanga, was shot dead at his house in January 2009. Sindiso Magaqa, an ANC councillor at Umzimkhulu municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, succumbed to his injuries in 2017 after being shot in what is believed to have been an ambush.
These are only two of scores of municipal councillors who have lost their lives as servants of the people at the local government level — supposedly the coalface of service delivery.
Unlike many others, they have faces and names. Like so many others, though, their families have yet to see justice many years after their deaths. This is how dangerous the business of serving the people — especially as whistle-blowers to malfeasance — has become.
Both were killed just as they were about to expose incidents of corruption at their municipalities. Corruption has become so widespread in local government that most — as many as 92% of SA’s 257 municipalities — are unable to secure clean audits of their councils and entities. And of the 18 that work, 12 are in the DArun Western Cape.
According to the latest available audit outcomes from the office of the auditor-general, a hefty R25.5bn of public funds was classified as wasteful expenditure out of a total of R380bn allocated to municipalities. This is a shocking disclosure, two decades after the first all-race elections. The number of municipalities that have been placed under administration is also extremely high, confirming once more that this sphere of government is dysfunctional.
The reasons for this collapse are twofold: first, local government leadership — both political and administrative — is populated by “rejects” (those deemed to have fallen out of favour with the dominant factions of the governing party, and the least-talented administrators, who are subject to enormous political pressure to dispense patronage).
Second, as with the national and provincial spheres of government, there is a high tolerance for mismanagement and maladministration.
Worse, Kimi Makwetu, the auditor-general, is now reporting that his officials are being threatened with violence. Service delivery failures are growing, hence the hundreds of protests and violence visited on schools, clinics and municipal offices. At national level, the political oversight function has experienced regular changes in the past decade, which does not help efforts to fix this function.
Political instability has been the order of the day in four key metros, eThekwini, Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay and Tshwane.
Since the 2016 municipal elections, eThekwini is being run by its second mayor (an intraparty change) and Nelson Mandela Bay (where the DA ran the metro with Bantu Holomisa’s UDM) is the site of regular chaos. After the resignation of maverick politician Herman Mashaba, the DA lost Johannesburg to the ANC’s Geoff Makhubo, and after falling out with Julius Malema’s EFF, the DA has been unable to form a new government in Tshwane.
The ANC-led provincial government has intervened and placed Tshwane under administration, a step that the DA is legally challenging. Only months before the planned fiveyearly municipal elections are due to be held, Tshwane might have to go back to the polls to break the impasse.
The consequences of this politically inspired dysfunction are dire when it comes to tackling the crises facing the country: unemployment, especially among the youth, inequality and poverty. As well as being caught up in the fight between their delinquent municipalities and state-owned enterprises such as utilities Eskom and the Passenger Rail Agency of SA, residents are having to contend with rapidly deteriorating public services in the few instances where these still exist.
These failures have wreaked havoc on taxpaying and jobcreating businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. As the political wrangling and administrative bungles continue unrestrained, small and medium-sized enterprises — SA’s future job creators — are being forced to shut their doors, sending thousands of South Africans home, forever.
Anecdotal stories that have been narrated to this columnist suggest that a painful meltdown is under way. Smaller towns, already facing the exodus of big businesses, are being turned into ghost towns, thanks to governance dysfunction.
Of greater concern, finance minister Tito Mboweni has failed to highlight the unfolding crisis. After announcing an allocation of R426bn to local government in his recent budget, he casually added: “The minister of co-operative governance & traditional affairs and I have agreed that our officials will find ways to use the allocations made through the municipal infrastructure grant to ensure that municipalities not only build new infrastructure but also maintain the infrastructure they already have.”
Yet building new infrastructure is a pipe dream when the existing infrastructure is collapsing from lack of maintenance. An emergency plan is required to stop the killing of honest politicians and officials — and small and medium-sized enterprises that are committed to create inclusive growth and jobs.
A MELTDOWN IS UNDER WAY. SMALLER TOWNS ARE BEING TURNED INTO GHOST TOWNS, THANKS TO GOVERNANCE DYSFUNCTION