Give a little, get a little

In principle, the South African Local Government’s (Salga’s) civic responsibility campaign that launches on Monday is spot on. In practice, they are going to find it very difficult to convince a jaded citizenry to pay for services they either don’t believe they’re getting, or in fact aren’t effectively getting.

The details of the campaign are as follows:

“[Salga] will on November 28 unveil a nationwide civic responsibility campaign in the Eastern Cape. [It] is aimed at educating members of local communities about their duties and obligations towards the social and economic upliftment of their local areas by paying for municipal services rendered.

“The campaign follows the sixth Salga National Conference held in March under the theme ‘Consolidating the role of local government in rebuilding local communities to meet their social, economic and material needs’, and seeks to reignite a renewed social contract between citizens and local government.”

The campaign is intended to encourage an active, involved, and responsible citizenry to pay for services to enable effective delivery by local government.

“The campaign will also spark conversations that will promote a capable and agile local government with citizens at the centre of service delivery as well as local government employees who are committed to their service delivery mandate and aware of their responsibility to pay their bills as enshrined in the Municipal Employees Act.”

And that is indeed how it should be. But there is such a serious trust deficit – remember that no fewer than 64 municipalities in the Eastern Cape are classified by the department of cooperative governance as dysfunctional – that it’s going to be really hard to convince ordinary people they should give a little to get a little.

Ndlambe Municipality is not one of those classified as dysfunctional. And it has an extraordinarily active citizenry, along with the basis (through local civic and business organisations) of a constructive relationship between citizens and local government.

In no way do we want to downplay the frustration of residents and businesses who have experienced water outages, particularly over the past two months when QFS downed tools in their dispute with Ndlambe Municipality.

But communication is a start, and thanks to local civic organisations, proactive municipal staff and public representatives who respect their constituencies, the municipality is communicating. It is a complex relationship and it will only work if everyone – citizens, officials and politicians keep talking.