Revitalising Local Government: The Need for Ethical Leadership

Michael Sutcliffe and Sue Bannister, City Insight (Pty) Ltd

It seems like yesterday when we adopted the White Paper on Local Government following on from our Constitution which said that local government must focus on creating decent living conditions for all of our people, who must enjoy safety and security where they live, who can access education, health and education and who can be part of a vibrant economy creating jobs and promoting inclusiveness.

There can be little doubt that we have moved very far down the road towards these ideals and away from the brutality of apartheid.  This is despite the effects of the separation of people on racial and gender lines, the treatment of the majority of our people as sojourners in the economic hubs of our country and the removals of people from their property and land.

In redressing this, we now find that over 80% of our households now have access to piped water in their yards, almost 90% live in households built of brick and concrete, almost 95% have access to electricity and only around 20% of our adults do not have access to the internet.

But in spite of these major achievements, a number of serious cracks are beginning to show and if not addressed soon, will be unable to be easily fixed.

Water and sanitation shortages and outages and the lack of maintenance are fast becoming the norm.  And whilst poor leadership, lack of competencies and corrupt practices have received the most attention in explaining the weaknesses, there are other issues which also deserve our attention.

Let’s start with the macro picture. 

Ten years ago the budgets were around R307 billion for all municipalities and today they have almost doubled to around R612 billion. 

However, municipalities do not spend all of their budgets. 

In fact, ten years ago municipalities did not spend R34 billion of the adjusted budgets in that year and this past year over R60 billion (roughly R1000 per person) remained unspent at the end of the financial year.

More worrying though is that if you look at the operational-capital budgets split, you find that ten years ago capital budgets were around 17% of the total budgets, but this has dropped significantly to only 10% of the total budgets.  This means that proportionately less money is being spent on the new infrastructure we need for human settlements, economic development and the like.

And then if we look at what is being spent on repairs and maintenance we find that last year the municipalities collectively said they would spend R34 billion on repairs and maintenance.  They then adjusted these budgets to say they would only spend R24 billion.  However, they actually only spent 73% of that adjusted figure by year-end.

We can add to this equation the fact that 84% of all municipalities have at least one “trigger” indicating they should have a financial intervention given their serious weaknesses such as the inability to make payments on time, make payments as and when due (such as to pay bulk service providers like ESKOM and Water Board, and/or they have significant operating deficits.

The Auditor-General (AG) Tsakani Maluleke reported, correctly, “on weaknesses in service delivery planning, reporting and achievement; failing municipal infrastructure; and the increasing pressure on local government finances due to a lack of careful spending, compounded by councils not paying sufficient attention to these matters… Unfunded budgets and high unauthorised expenditures clearly show the weaknesses in financial planning. As a result, the financial health of municipalities remains weak”.

We must recognise, though, that there are significant differences across municipalities. 

Municipalities like Tshwane have grown by almost 2 million people in 20 years, yet others like Amathole have a declining population.

There are 27 municipalities which spent almost R340 billion on operations and R30 billion on capital, some 75% of all monies spent by the 257 municipalities. 

These 27 municipalities range in size from Stellenbosch (175000 people) to Johannesburg (around 4.8 million), and collectively they are our major economic centres.

No doubt the major and general problems are that municipalities often have inadequate skills and capacity,  and there can be no excuse for governance failures and the lack of consequence action being taken.

However, It is very easy to point fingers as to who is to blame.  We should start with the institutions which have the mandate to monitor local government and ask them to be responsive and take urgent action which will result in real change. 

Their focus must be on stopping payments of performance bonuses, not allowing the appointment of senior managers who do not have the requisite experience or professional qualifications, intervening when Municipal Staffing Regulations are not complied with, calling for specific consequent action against managers who are responsible and/or accountable, requiring responses (which should be publically available) of any allegation made against a municipal official, and so on.

These institutions, particularly the National Treasury, should not bother with wasting money on training programmes on ethics, but rather on ensuring that those who steal are put in jail as that is the best medicine for others thinking they can get away with corruption.

But equally, we must all find solutions to the contextual challenges.  Socially, we must do much, much more to address our highly segregated and unequal society, ensuring we must build quality living human settlements close to workplaces for working-class people and we must radically improve public transport and reduce costs. 

Environmentally too, we must continually mitigate and adapt to climate change, sustainable use our resources, and in the case of water reduce our consumption levels.  Economically, providing land to those previously disadvantaged by apartheid is a necessary condition to build a more egalitarian society.

One size does not fit all of our municipalities given the wide diversity, such as in population size and geography.

We must focus on transparency and ensuring consistent application of the legislative environment. 

Imagine if every municipality provided on its website the cost of outsourced service delivery, such as the use of contractors and what it is costing us each time they get called out to undertake repairs in each of our wards. 

Not only will we be able to monitor whether or not they have performed such services, but we could all ensure there is value for money as we start seeing where and how our money is being spent.

We must also acknowledge the good work happening within our municipalities and build on those strengths.  Even where there is poor leadership, many municipal workers keep the municipalities functioning.  It is because of this work that municipalities continue to spend more on public infrastructure as compared to provincial and national governments (excluding major state-owned entities).

Finally, we must collectively ensure that senior management is far more responsive and that they should be held to account by their Councils when they have failed to carry out their duties particularly when they fail to respond to requests for information and/or assistance.

** Michael Sutcliffe and Sue Bannister are Directors of City Insight (Pty) Ltd.

***The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

IOL Opinion