Local government and economies should be insulated from political overreach as the conflation of the party and the state often erodes the provision of service delivery, says former president Kgalema Motlanthe.
To fix local government, which has consistently been flagged by the auditor-general as a sphere of government lacking in basic financial and performance management, and to improve service delivery, there must be a separation of political and administrative sides within municipal councils, Motlanthe says.
“Councillors are the political side … we must fix the administration and do so within a framework [so that] the interface between the political and administration [is] managed without the political weakening or undermining administration,” Motlanthe told Business Day in an interview ahead of the upcoming third annual inclusive growth forum hosted by his foundation.
“The state in the main is administration, so we have to sort out administration and [attract] the kind of people that is required to have an efficiently run local municipality, so that by the time you get to a point where an established company in the locality is contemplating [moving] elsewhere, it means that there is a problem.”
For more than a decade Motlanthe has argued that the governing ANC is becoming increasingly irrelevant to society at large. He has gone as far as to say that the ANC may need to lose political power for genuine organisational renewal to take place in the party.
The party was relegated to opposition benches in the Gauteng metros of Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni in the 2021 municipal polls when its support dipped below 50% for the first time since 1994, a result largely viewed as a backlash against poor service delivery and widespread corruption.
Though Motlanthe leads the ANC’s electoral commission ahead of the party’s national conference in December, he is hoping to use this event to try to shift the national conversation away from party politics, which is driven by factional agendas, to one that focuses on the political economy.
“Local government must be stabilised such that you can attract investment so that you build local economies ... we have to ensure that the local economy thrives, that’s how jobs will be created and stem the tide of migration to the major metros,” he says.
The former president says the three-day growth forum, which is now in its third year and attracts business, political and diplomatic leaders as well as SA’s leading activists, will, among other things, focus on how SA can attract investment within its municipalities and other local economies with a the aim of presenting a solutionist report to the government.
“This year we want to focus on attracting investment. And also, secondly, local governments and local economies, as well as town planning and new pathways in education and skills development,” Motlanthe says.
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