Salga is to blame for some of this mess
IN THE seven years that AuditorGeneral Kimi Makwetu has been examining the books of all 278 municipalities to make sure their office holders are looking after public funds, there has not been a year without horror stories of mismanagement and theft from the public purse.
Yet, no one has been brought to court, found guilty and punished for what is often bald, unadulterated theft of other people’s money. The latest tally is R22 billion lost to theft and vandalism, and payment for goods and services never received. The victims are, of course, the ordinary citizens who pay taxes.
Year after year the same things are revealed. Mr Makwetu described most municipalities as “crippled by debt… unable to pay for water and electricity; having inaccurate and lacklustre revenue collection; expenditure that is unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful; and with a high dependence on grants and assistance from national government.”
In other words, behaving like teenage children who, in the words of American satirist P J O’Rourke, have been given whiskey and car keys.
But what Makwetu didn’t mention was the role played in our municipal shambles by the South African Local Government Association (Salga) and the various trade unions that affect all municipalities, even those with clean, or almost-clean, audits.
Salga shines through as a major cause of the problem. It’s because Salga operates as a white-collar trade union for municipal workers but abides by whatever wage agreement the trade unions come to in negotiations.
As management, they also benefit from a national agreement binding on all municipalities. So, if the unions wangle a salary increase of 6% for their members, the managers happily accept that percentage as a top-up to their much-higher salaries.
It means incompetents can run a municipality into the ground and still get paid, as if they were paragons of financial and managerial virtue.
Salga seems to be only slightly embarrassed about this, judging from the reaction of its president Thembi Nkadimeng, who said in reaction to the auditor-general’s latest stinging condemnation of municipal finances: “There is an urgent need to speed up the review of the fiscal framework of local government. We will have to look into discussions of how best we can release… funds to these municipalities while enforcing compliance. If we don’t do that, the indication is (sic) deteriorating financially and will continue, and this will put difficulty on our community.”
If anyone can translate that statement into a call to root out municipal corruption, then it is proof that hope springs eternal, and nothing will be done until there is nothing left to steal. It happens that the president of Salga is a beneficiary of the 6% annual increase club.