Municipalities must clean up their act
Municipalities share a proximity to our people and communities. A pandemic such as Covid-19 that spreads easily requires a functional local government immune from maladministration, non-compliance with procurement regulations and corruption.
As a result of the pandemic, the South African government was forced to implement unprecedented actions to curb the spread of the deadly virus.
President Cyril Ramaphosa determined that Covid-19 is a threat to our healthcare system, economy and, most importantly, our people, which precipitated special measures which required an immediate response beyond what is provided for in existing legislation and regulations.
This response placed municipalities at the coalface to fight the pandemic as mandated by the constitution, with an important role to extend services and reduce inequalities, and demonstrate to the people that their society is capable of organising itself in an efficient and effective manner.
This mandate has been deferred for 20 years.
The auditor-general reported in 2013 already of the many challenges in municipal governance, such as indecisive leadership to address the lethargy, maladministration and procurement corruption AGSA reports as early as 2013 among the many challenges that face municipal governance, pointed out the indecisive leadership to address poor lethargic behaviour of maladministration and procurement corruption by not applying consequences against individuals who halt the effective implementation of municipal objectives.
In the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic critical pieces of legislation such as Public Finance Management Act and Municipal Finance Management Act had some sections specifically dealing with procurement relaxed to speed up procurement of essential products and services.
These services range from provision of water tanks to informal settlements and provision of food parcels to needy communities and households.
As part of the response to Covid-19, money from the Disaster Management Fund has been allocated to municipalities to boost their ability to effectively curb the spread of the virus. A critical question arises as result.
How will a sphere riddled with poor compliance, poor audit results, supply chain management misbehaviour and unauthorised irregular expenditure overcome such a state of chaos and poor governance and fight the pandemic as expected?
Many have correctly argued and continue to do so that Covid-19 has changed our daily lives and the way we interact and do things.
This is evident in shutting down of cities and countries and people engaging in social distancing.
Definitely the impact will be long-lasting.
World economies will suffer and developing countries like SA will feel the effects the most.
Some say the expectation and debate among the ruling party elite is that Covid-19 will have a positive impact on municipal governance and change how things are done.
A legacy of Covid-19 in SA, besides the inevitable deaths of those who can’t afford a health-care system, is likely to be worse corruption and looting of state resources by those running municipalities.
As a response local municipalities need to urgently establish and enforce a consequence management strategy.
This management strategy will enable municipalities to identify potential risk with the main goal to guarantee smooth organisation to curb the spread of Covid-19.
The consequence management strategy needs to encompass the following aspects:
● Provision of appropriate controls to stop impediment of accountability and governance measures.
● Leadership “will” to initiate appropriate mechanisms for sanctions and punishment for governance lapses.
● Development of appropriate organisational level policies to create a culture of best practice behaviour in officials.
For consequence management to be effective, municipalities need to establish an integrated system with state security agencies like the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation and the National Prosecuting Authority.
This is done with the intention to enforce sanctions and punishment against officials who fail to comply with municipal legislation and regulation.
This is an opportune moment for local government to use the pandemic to establish effective management strategies to be used post-pandemic for improved delivery of services to communities.