Makana miasma is deep and wide

COOPERATIVE Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Zweli Mkhize has, over the past few weeks, been visiting Eastern Cape municipalities. The visits are part of his support for the turnaround of dysfunctional and distressed municipalities.

The minister has his work cut out for him. As he himself points out, only 7% of this country’s municipalities can be classified as “functioning well”.

Of the remaining 93%, he says 31% are classified as reasonably functional, 31% as “almost dysfunctional”, and the remaining 31% are dysfunctional.

Makana municipality is one of a few municipalities he visited in the Eastern Cape. He undertook to provide support for the strengthening of the municipality, which he says, with some understatement, is in “distress”.

The municipality has been hamstrung by inefficient and incompetent governance for many years. Many essential managerial posts go unfilled for years at a time or are filled with people who seem not up to the job. The post of municipal manager has stood empty since the last incumbent, Pravin Naidoo, was fired in 2014.

Amatola Water took over the bulk water provision after a wholesale collapse of the infrastructure, but it left without completing its job because Makana failed to pay it what was owed.

It has often been pointed out that Makana municipality is a vital hub strategically situated between the Buffalo City and Nelson Mandela metropoles. It is the seat of the high court in the province and is home to Rhodes University and dozens of government schools, as well as several prestigious private schools. It also hosts the internationally renowned National Arts Festival.

Its strategic value was acknowledged by Mkhize and his intervention enjoys the goodwill of most of the city’s businesses, educational and other institutions, all of which are desperate for sound basic services and serviceable infrastructure.

Sarah Baartman district municipal manager Ted “Fixit” Pillay is currently on loan to Makana, and he is also doing what he can to turn it around.

But he says he needs a boatload of money to recapitalise the decaying municipal infrastructure, including the pot-holed roads.

While providing temporary expertise and assistance to the municipality, Mkhize says money won’t follow until Makana gets the basics right.

While this makes sense on paper, Pillay will battle to get the basics right with a bloated staff complement and an intractable SA Municipal Workers’ Union which won’t compromise. He now heads a municipality which collects only a fraction of revenue owed to it while it, in turn, owes more than R200-million to its creditors. The crumbling road, water, electricity and sanitation infrastructure means he will battle to retain business investment, never mind attract new investment.

The expertise and advisers on loan to Makana will be welcome in the skillsstrapped municipality. But, unless government finds some way to recapitalise the infrastructure, this intervention will go the same way as previous interventions.

And that is absolutely nowhere.