Local government has a crucial role to play in providing basic services, creating local jobs, and establishing the kind of participatory governance envisioned by the Constitution. Effectively exercising these functions is the key contribution the local sphere makes to realising human rights.
Local government has a crucial role to play in providing basic services, creating local jobs, and establishing the kind of participatory governance envisioned by the Constitution. Effectively exercising these functions is the key contribution the local sphere makes to realising human rights.
Many South African municipalities, however, have struggled in this regard.
Makana Municipality, including Grahamstown, is a case in point, and currently faces serious financial challenges, the loss of governance legitimacy, and growing citizen frustration.
These problems may well intensify, given that the fiscus in its entirety is coming under pressure, unless decisive reforms are achieved.
A basic condition for service delivery that contributes to rights realisation is effective planning, budgeting and oversight, and in this regard the evidence for Makana is bleak.
Audit requirements have consistently not been met, revenue collection has been lower than anticipated due to unrealistic assumptions and poor billing, actual capital spending has often been less than allocations, and there has been poor control over operational expenditure.
In addition, various instances of irregular and wasteful expenditure have been identified, including the shifting of capital budgets to finance operational spending.
As a result of these problems, the municipality has experienced cash flow problems, and has been unable to address growing resource challenges, such as in maintaining and expanding water infrastructure.
More fundamentally, it has experienced a crisis of legitimacy.
Concerns around the legality of spending, and the ability of the municipality to deliver services, led of course to the municipality being placed under administration in August 2014.
The underlying reasons for financial management and delivery failures are related, as for many South African municipalities, to the interaction of capacity problems, failures of oversight, and political appointments getting in the way of delivering services effectively.
Indeed, these factors cannot be separated.
The lack of deep accountability in the municipality has for example allowed capacity challenges to go unchallenged for too long.
Examples include key positions being filled in ‘acting’ capacities for longer than the six months required by the Municipal Systems Act, inadequate qualifications for key positions, absence of performance agreements, and a high vacancy rate.
At the heart of the social contract between local governments and citizens is the notion of responsiveness.
Municipalities are in theory ‘closest to the people’ and as such should be the first port of call for citizens.
There is little to suggest that this has been the case in Grahamstown, however.
What, then, is the way forward? Five things are needed to turn the existing vicious circle into a virtuous circle, and must be kept at the centre of the turnaround process.
First, a greater sense of urgency is required in ensuring that local functions are delivered on efficiently, effectively and sustainably.
Urgency here means that a sense of crisis be retained until a full turnaround is achieved.
Second, as with many municipalities in South Africa, there is a need to get the basics right.
That is, to concentrate on delivering core services, to produce credible budgets, and to comply adequately with the required legislation.
Getting the basics right is clearly important from a service delivery perspective, but is equally important in rebuilding the local social contract.
Thirdly, the right people need to be appointed to the right positions, and this needs to be separated from party political issues and from cronyism.
Fourth, citizen participation needs to be deepened, in order to attain deeper social accountability.
Fifth, close monitoring and support must continue to be provided by both national and provincial government for at least the next two years, in order to ensure that the turnaround strategy is effectively implemented.
* Len Verwey is Monitoring and Advocacy Manager at the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM).
