President Cyril Ramaphosa has implored mayors, councillors and government representatives to turn local government around, saying many had lost faith in its ability to meet their needs.
Ramaphosa said that while government had made commendable progress over the past 28 years in delivering basic services to the people, local government needed to be turned around to improve people’s lived experiences. He was addressing the national conferences of the SA Local Government Association (Salga), the employer body representing the country’s 257 municipalities, in Cape Town on Wednesday,
The country’s 257 municipalities, which are at the coalface of service delivery, have received an allocation of more than R450bn from the fiscus over the 2022 medium-term expenditure framework.
“Municipalities are the first point of contact between government and the people. When there are local government failures, the effects are felt immediately and they are far-reaching,” said Ramaphosa.
Some of the municipalities have been run into the ground due to maladministration, looting and corruption, while others are struggling to pay staff salaries and employment benefits, or deliver basic services such as refuse collection, a supply of potable water and sanitation.
“By June last year, some 26 municipalities had been placed under administration. This number has now risen to 31 municipalities under administration. We continue to hear about municipalities under threat of administration,” Ramaphosa said, during the virtual address.
“Many residents have lost faith in the ability of local government to meet their needs. So too have many investors. To take just one example, in June last year, the dairy group Clover closed the country’s largest cheese factory in North West, citing ongoing challenges with water, electricity and road infrastructure.”
Ramaphosa said challenges in municipalities did not only affect the lives of communities. “They damage both local economies and the SA economy. This need not be the case. Local government is where you can make the biggest difference in the lives of our people,” he said, adding that the local sphere of government was the “most important enable of economic growth and development”.
By providing a reliable water supply, sanitation, energy and refuse services, and through road and infrastructure maintenance, local government enables our economy to grow and create employment, Ramaphosa said.
“As leaders across government, we have to work with all stakeholders in municipalities to deliver a better life to our communities. This calls for decisive leadership and accountability. We must focus on building municipalities that are sustainable, efficient and free of corruption.”
In his medium-term budget policy statement in November last year, finance minister Enoch Godongwana said the government’s immediate task is to build capable local government that delivers services effectively and efficiently.
Auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke told parliament in June last year that during 2019/2020 the number of clean municipal audits declined from 33 to 27, while fruitless and wasteful expenditure amounted to R3.47bn, a big part of which was the loss of billions of rand because of interest and penalties. Irregular expenditure amounted to R26bn, and widespread non-compliance with supply chain management legislation singled out as a big contributor.
According to the department of co-operative governance & traditional affairs’ local government barometer released in June last year, 64 municipalities were currently dysfunctional and 111 on the brink of dysfunctionality, while only 16 out of 257 are stable.
The dysfunction in local government was rooted in poor governance, weak institutional capacity, poor financial management, corruption and political instability, he said.
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