Hit a pothole? Can you count on a councillor?

WHEN you put your X on the ballot paper in the municipal election, what exactly did you sign up for?

The Saturday Star looks at how much a councillor will cost you, what kind of representation you can expect from your ward or proportional representation councillor over the next five year and what steps you can take to boot them from office if they don’t fulfil their obligation.

The salary of a ward councillor, also referred to as part-time councillor, costs government R441 064 a year. This translates to R36 000 a month. For that amount of money each councillor is expected to attend monthly meetings and ensure your complaints about potholes, malfunctioning clinics and libraries make it to the council agenda and are attended to timeously.

According to advocate Ernest Chipu, a legal adviser for the city council, each council member is expected to attend meetings once a month or present a written apology to the Speaker if they fail to do so. Chipu says councillors are also compelled to ensure they understand what their duties entail. This, he says, includes reading and interpreting council documents, understanding financial reports, participating in the voting process and giving feedback to the community.

“The code of conduct requires all councillors to be accountable. They have an obligation to perform their duties with honesty and integrity,” he says.

While the municipality will equip councillors with the necessary skills to do their jobs through training over the next few weeks, Chipu says it is the prerogative of the council to deal with rogue councillors.

“Let’s say a councillor calls a meeting and they are drunk. Any individual in that meeting can write a complaint to the Speaker, who will escalate this to the office of the integrity commission and an investigation will be conducted. Communities can also petition for a councillor to be removed.”

Advocate Benjamin Lekalakala, the secretary to the council, points out that if a councillor is found to have breached the code of conduct, the council may issue a formal warning, reprimand or fine the councillor or request the MEC for Local Government to suspend or remove the official from office.

Meanwhile, political parties warn that councillors will have to show their commitment to service delivery or ship out.

DA Joburg regional chair man Khume Ramulifho says the party’s councillors have to be responsive, accessible and be activists in their communities. “They ought to identify challenges and help sort out all the issues that affect residents. They also need to be champions for change.”

He adds that once inaugurated DA councillors will sign performance contracts that will outline targets they need to meet and will be assessed regularly. He promises that under-performing councillors will be fired.

IFP national chairman Blessed Gwala says a ward councillor needs to focus on his or her ward.

“We have a constitutional structure, a political oversight committee, which looks after the performance of councillors. If a councillor fails to perform, that councillor is taken to the disciplinary committee. In the past, we have been accused in the media of expelling people. It’s those very people that don’t do their jobs that we get rid of,” he says.

Freedom Front Plus national election co-ordinator Wouter Wessels says there is a misconception that PR councillors do not have an obligation to deliver.

“All ward and PR councillors need to hold meetings and give feedback to residents within their community. A proportional representative is accountable to the people. When people voted last week, the party’s logo was on the ballot paper. Hence all councillors must be held accountable because they represent the party,” he says.

Councillors, the mayor, the Speaker and chief whip will be sworn in next week.