Will the DA’s blueprint work?
to apply the existing blueprints to their newly won municipalities but it may not be easy to do so, said Ebrahim Fakir, a political analyst at the Electoral Institute for the Sustainability of Democracy i n Africa.
The DA does not have a standing coalition in every municipality and so will have to get a majority vote on every issue, he said. He also warned that the DA’s performance in some municipalities would not give a general indication of its ability to govern.
Karen Heese, an economist at Municipal IQ, said when looking at the DA’s track record, most DA-run councils during the last term were in the Western Cape, which is better resourced and often with fewer backlogs typically than municipalities elsewhere.
C l a mp i n g d o w n o n c o r r u p - tion and mismanagement is one of the first things the DA can do, political economist Ralph Mathekga said.
“I think the bar is quite l ow regarding municipalities in general when it comes to expectations. If you can eliminate corruption and strengthen integrity, like in the City of Cape Town, you can punt that as a success,” he said. “If you clamp down on corruption, just doing that and without being innovative, you will free up a lot of money … We are still at the level of just getting the basics right.”
The credit ratings agencies also base part of their rating on financial management, with the most sub- stantial indicator being the auditor general’s report, said Mathekga. The latest report gives the City of Cape Town a clean audit but not the City of Johannesburg (See “Corruption and management — the facts”). The ratings agency Moody’s has, however, awarded both municipalities the highest global rating (Baa2).
Job creation
Alan Winde, the MEC for economic opportunities in the Western Cape, said growth and job creation have been the priority of the Western Cape government since 2009. “Our intensive focus on achieving this goal has shown results,” he said.
According to figures released by Statistics South Africa, the jobs growth rate was 9.7% in the Western Cape, 4.6% nationally and 4.3% in Gauteng.
In the fourth quarter of last year, Cape Town had an official unemployment rate of 20.5%, whereas it was 25.5% nationally. Tshwane had an official unemployment rate of 23.4%, Johannesburg 27.9% and Nelson Mandela Bay 30.6%. The metro with the lowest official employment rate was the ANC-run eThekwini with 15.9%, which was 43% in 2001.
The Midvaal local municipality said it has the lowest unemployment rate in Gauteng — 12%. The unemployment rate was 22.8% in 2001 when the DA took over. “The strategy for creating employment in Midvaal has been to concentrate on attracting investment into the area,” said the municipal spokesperson, Aaliyah Dangor.
Service delivery
“It is hard to make any definitive assessment of relative success given that the last census was in 2011 but I don’t think that Cape Town can, on delivery grounds, show that it had a superior solution to issues like sanitation,” Heese said. According to Municipal IQ, the Western Cape accounted for 14% of the country’ service delivery protests for the 2015 year. It was trumped by Gauteng’s 15%, KwaZulu-Natal’s 17% and the Eastern Cape’s 20%. In Cape Town, as measured from 2001 and the last census in 2011, access to electricity went from 88.8% to 94%. Piped water inside dwellings went from 69.4% to 75%. Weekly refuse removal stayed the same at 94.3%. Flush toilets connected to sewerage went from 85.4% to 88.2%.
In these same period, in Midvaal, access to sanitation increased from 73% to 94%. Access to water went from 90% to 98%. Access to refuse removal increased from 58% to 84% and access to electricity from 68% to 89%.
Even so, in June this year, protesting residents in Midvaal demanded that the mayor must address several issues, including water, sanitation and housing.
Themba Ndaba, the ANC spokesperson for the Sedibeng region under which Midvaal falls, said the ANC was concerned about the DA’s failure to provide the poor residents of the Midvaal with basic services.
He said the DA has proved that it is a “racist, pro-capitalist, imperialist political party”, and infuses these segregationist policies in its service delivery programmes in all the municipalities and metros where it governs. While the council continues to “splurge on affluent areas”, some areas have limited or no access to basic services.
“Other challenges facing the residents of Midvaal local municipality include alcohol and substance abuse, unemployment, lack of or poor stormwater and drainage systems, shortage of high schools, clinics and hospitals and a poor public transport system,” Ndaba said.
The DA has continually battled accusations that poorer areas are underserviced in their municipalities. The party claimed that, in the 2014-2015 financial year, Cape Town spent 67% of its budget in poor communities, but Africa Check found a number of departments were not included in this calculation. When they were, pro-poor spending dropped to 49.4%.
That DA service delivery to the poor is not all it is chalked up to be is more an issue of perception, and one of the past, Mathekga said.
“There were criticisms of what they were doing in black neighbourhoods, but the ANC doesn’t even have the credibility to raise these kinds of questions anymore,” he said.
What blueprints the DA can take from its other municipalities are subject to a number of unknowns, Fakir said. “Can they rely on the existing bureaucracy to buy into a DA programme, or will they be obstructionist?”
In councils, the ANC has experience in governing portfolios and could use their knowledge of the rules of council to their advantage to frustrate and delay processes, he said.
Although the Economic Freedom Fighters voted with the DA to elect a mayoral candidate in Tshwane and Johannesburg, there is no standing coalition. “The EFF have said they will deliberate on an issue-by-issue basis,” said Fakir. “It could mean stronger oversight, or it could cause excessive delays.
“If the DA is clever it will try to moderate some of its own manifesto issues and negotiate those with the EFF to speed up key decisions,” Fakir said. “It also depends on the game the EFF is playing. And we don’t know what that is.”