Labour federations and local government experts have welcomed co-operative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) minister Velenkosini Hlabisa’s plans to dissolve dysfunctional municipalities and hold fresh elections for officials.
However, the SA Local Government Association (Salga), the employer body representing the country’s 257 municipalities lashed out at the national and provincial governments for failing to render meaningful and targeted support to distressed councils.
The local government sector — which is at the coalface of service delivery — is grappling with fiscal pressures, entrenched corruption, maladministration, systemic looting and poor governance that has resulted in deteriorating services in many municipalities.
Others struggle to pay staff salaries and employment benefits, deliver basic services such as refuse collection, or provide drinkable water and sanitation. Of the 257 municipalities, more than 120 have cases of corruption under investigation by the Hawks.
Hlabisa was quoted as saying at the weekend: “The first thing you do in a dysfunctional municipality is to intervene with support, but it cannot go [on] indefinitely — a line must be drawn somewhere. If you realise, we are trying to intervene, we are trying to support, [but] the co-operation is bad, the last option is to dissolve [the councils].”
Hlabisa’s remarks come against the backdrop of a bill introduced for public comment in May by his predecessor, Thembi Nkadimeng, which seeks to rein in local government instability by making it difficult to remove executive mayors, speakers and chief whips.
Wits School of Governance senior lecturer Kagiso Pooe said the minister’s plans about dysfunctional councils “is a partial step in the right direction, but more actual drastic and long-term planning is needed to make local government work in SA”.
“As things currently stand, according to the Cogta website there are 32 municipalities placed under section 139 of the constitution and the Municipal Finance Management Act. This obviously being the most extreme form of intervention by Cogta,” Pooe said.
“If Cogta is serious about reform, it needs to cut down the 257 municipalities, particularly the 44 district, 205 local municipalities and possibly one metropolitan municipality in the Eastern Cape,” he added.
Many of these municipalities “aren’t financially viable and lack the necessary human capital to develop. So, the first step in reforming local government is to arrive at an actual sustainable number of local government municipalities and then relook at council intervention. In the absence of this, nothing will actually be achieved”.
‘Alarming decline’
Cosatu spokesperson Zanele Sabela said the labour federation welcomed interventions in the local government sphere as “its decline over the past decade has been alarming”.
“We’ve seen the number of financially distressed municipalities spike from 10% to over 80%. Many rural municipalities have seen basic services collapse and companies close as a result, leading to the retrenchment of workers. The Ditsobotla municipality is a case in point,” Sabela said.
In 2021, dairy company Clover said it was closing its cheese processing plant at Lichtenburg in the North West and moving it to Queensburgh in KwaZulu-Natal, due to a lack of service delivery by the Ditsobotla municipality.
“Cosatu has for years been raising the need for interventions in parliament and with Cogta, with up to 36 municipalities struggling to pay staff especially in the North West, Free State and the Northern and Eastern Cape,” Sabela said.
She said local government had been at the epicentre of procurement corruption: “We hope the soon-to-be-signed Public Procurement Bill will help tackle this cancer. We would welcome any effort to hold politicians who have broken these municipalities accountable, starting with Matjhabeng. Working-class communities cannot afford a business-as-usual approach to the collapse of local government.”
SA Federation of Trade Unions spokesperson Trevor Shaku said Cogta needed to first intervene with support to ensure councils performed optimally.
“In some municipalities, it is certain individuals such as mayors and municipal managers that are destructive and preside over the looting. In such municipalities, Cogta must swiftly intervene to isolate such individuals and deal with them thoroughly,” Shaku said.
“Second, Cogta must work with law enforcement to deal decisively with corruption in municipalities, which is the main hindrance to service delivery. Between 2012 and 2024, local government accounted for more than 16% of the corruption reports received by Corruption Watch.”
In the case of dysfunctional municipalities, “where policies cannot be determined, budgets be passed on time and oversight over administrative arms of municipalities take place effectively, we agree that such councils must be dissolved”.
Salga president Bheki Stofile said he was worried about “shortsighted comments” in the face of many difficulties faced by SA, and noted that Hlabisa had no acquired expertise and knowledge as a government minister.
Stofile said he expected Hlabisa to develop a proper standard operating plan that “must entail what kind of funding should go with intervention to municipalities; what type of skills to deploy and so on”.
He said the government at both national and provincial levels had not been helpful in getting distressed councils back at their feet. “And that’s dereliction of duty on their part.”
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