People’s Power for Economic Freedom Table of Content
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- Spending that is People-Centred: A Matter of Compliance
- Constitutional Mandate Vs Local, Provincial and National Governance in Relation to Service Delivery.
- A municipality must strive, within its financial and administrative capacity, to achieve the objects set out in subsection (1) Demarcation Process Framework
- Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations Act, no 97 of 1997;
- Financial and Fiscal Commission Act, no 99 of 1997;
- Local government Municipal Act, no.27 of 2000;
- Local Government: Municipal Finance Act, no 6 56 of 2003 (MFMA)
- Intergovernmental Relation Framework, no.13 of 2005
- “National Council of Provinces Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Budget Vote Debate 23 April 2010
- Figure 1
Historical Context The South African development and civilization pattern were interrupted by the invasion of the Dutch East Indian Company and the British imperialist. These uninvited colonisers have left the indigenous people without land and subjected them into a bumpy path of underdevelopment. The foundations for the local government system were laid in the aftermath of the Anglo-South African Boer War and the creation of the Union of South Africa that was embedded on the framework of South African Act of 1909. This discriminative colonial Act was embodied with British Colonial statues affirmed by British parliament and assented by King Edward VII. The South African Union created racial based a unitary state based on Western doctrine and three—tier governmental structure comprising central, provincial and local components. The nature of the South African political system was inextricably linked with the country’s economy and the dominant role of gold mining. The migrant labour system, introduced to guarantee a steady stream of cheap black labour to the mines, was adapted into a broader system of social, political and economic control, which was later refined into the system of apartheid. As the economy developed, urbanization increased and the government began to seek ways by which black people could provide labour in white towns and cities but be excluded from living there. It passed restrictive legislation designed to curb the movement of black people, including the Native Trust and Land Act of 1936 and the Native Laws Amendment Act of 1937. This legislation failed to discourage black people from migrating to urban areas, where municipalities had to provide basic services for them (DBSA, 2000, p. 9). The legalisation of apartheid in 1948 cemented the racial structure that was laid by the arrival of colonial settlers’ local government system. It must be noted that the racist supremacy government administration did place the white local states, in areas where it was best favourably with benefaction of facilities, strategic industrial areas, with adequate essential services and amenities. Contrary the black majority in general were located in inferior areas, without infrastructure, forced to settle in the inhabitable zones. The 1998 White Paper on Local government has summarised this inhuman development in this proper context. ‘’Apartheid was not the beginning of geographic, institutional and social separation at the local level. Segregation was already a policy by the time apartheid was introduced in 1948.However, the Group Areas Act, the key piece of apartheid legislation, instituted strict residential segregation and compulsory removal of black people to “own group” areas. Through spatial separation, influx control, and a policy of “own management for own areas” ,apartheid aimed to limit the extent to which affluent white municipalities would bear the financial burden of servicing disadvantaged black areas. The Group Areas Act restricted the permanent presence of Africans in urban areas through the pass system, and reserved a viable municipal revenue base for white areas by separating townships and industrial and commercial development”. Indeed the outcomes of this apartheid policy consequently have positioned the indigenous black majority into a pathway of underdevelopment. It is clear that this racial skewed spatial local government development was further endorsed by the introduction of group areas Act, No. 41 of 1950. Subsequently there were numerous acts of parliament that we enacted by the apartheid regime, that seeks to ensure that African majority, blacks in particular lives in terrible state. Our current local government imperfect state stems from apartheid colonial oppression and it requires radical changes for it to properly address. This vicious system of local government; that was aligned on the discriminative foundation and with exclusivity policy was vehemently rejected by the oppressed majority. In Bantustans, limited local government was established. Traditional leaders were given powers over land allocation and development matters in areas with communally owned land. Some small rural townships (the so-called “R293 towns”) were given their own administrations, but these lacked real powers. In the 1960s, “Coloured” and “Indian” management committees were established as advisory bodies to white municipalities. The Bantu Affairs Administration Act of 1971 established appointed Administration Boards, which removed responsibility for townships from white municipalities. In 1977, Community Councils were introduced. Community Councils were elected bodies, but had no meaningful powers and few resources. They never gained political credibility. In 1982 Black Local Authorities replaced Community Councils. Black Local Authorities had no significant revenue base, and were seen as politically illegitimate from the start. They were rejected by popular (and sometimes violent) community mobilisation (Local Government white paper, 1997). The apartheid regime attempted to create a false reality by pursuing people to vote in separate racial inclined local government elections. These local government elections were rejected and boycotted by communities since they were not representing the true people aspiration or majority voice. During the course of apartheid era, the local government system was de facto controlled by the white minority system and whites the majority were not actively involved as participants in running of government in the local state. It is during 1980 that the apartheid government was compiled to negotiate with communities’ civic association. The white apartheid government under the leadership Nationalist Party was no more able to fight back the people defiance of local black administration that was imposed to them. The Nationalist Party started to negotiate with local civic communities on local level. The key demands of civic organisations was non-racial unification and democratisation of local government coupled to that it was equal distribution redistribution of resources and full participation of citizen to the running of local state. The apartheid regime was persistent, not prepared to adhere to the people’s demands. Subsequently the people started to discard; the self-imposed local councillor’s puppets and they boycotted the payment services that resulted to the downfall of the black reactionary administration authorities in black townships country wide. These fuelled a state of ungovernability across the country and the apartheid foundation was shaken and the apartheid security state begins to show cracks no more able to control people resistance. In August 1984 the Vaal Civic Association (VCA) and the Azanian People's Organisation organized a school and rent boycott in the Eastern Cape and by July 1985 96 people were dead, 105 councillors had been attacked and 66 of their properties burned down. As a result of attacks on councillors and council officials only three of 139 councils were still functioning by 1985 and attacks were widened to include people such as policemen who were regarded as government collaborators or supporters. The government's efforts at co-opting Blacks were violently and abruptly brought to an end (Shearing 1986, 299).” The apartheid regime tried to apply all the tricks in their own disposal and it became unfortunate that it failed dismally. The enforcement of the State of Emergency in the black townships was done with a hope of using military power; so by instilling fear to the masses of our people and to bring security stability in their own terms. All the security posturing efforts made by the brutal regime didn’t work against the bravery of the oppressed that were tirelessly determined, demanding a democratic non-racial local state of affairs. The political balance of forces in the early 1990’s made it possible the local government negotiation process to be restated and formalised. The South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) was at the forefront of this negotiation. The state of local government was crumbling, the non-payment of service was impacting negatively to State finances and the money owned to local councillors have escalated into millions of rands. In 1993 the Local Government Negotiating Forum (LGNF) was inaugurate to pursue the negotiation for statutory and non-statutory organisation. The establishment of this forum is significant achievement to the oppressed masses and outcome that was made possible by community struggles demanding an inclusive, efficient and non-racial local government. The LGNF laid a foundation for the local government pre- transitional period that gives birth to the Local Government Transition Act, 1993. The Local government Transitional Act find expression and is premised from the 1993 Interim Constitution. The crisis in local government was a major force leading to the national reform process which began in1990. National debate about the future of local government took place in the Local Government Negotiating Forum, alongside the national negotiating process. The Local Government Negotiating Forum framed the Agreement on Finance and Services writing off arrears to Black Local Authorities. It also negotiated the Local Government Transition Act of 1993. The Local Government Transition Act did not provide a blueprint for a new local government system but simply sketched a process for change. The process put forward in the Local Government Transition Act was essentially a locally-negotiated transition and resulted in wide diversity forms of local government (Department of Provincial and Local Government, 2008). The Local Government Transition Act had sketched out three phases processes which are:
Apartheid regime pumped more resources on white suburbs as compared to the black townships and rural areas of South Africa. Our people suffered immensely through this exclusion in terms of resource allocation. The infrastructure in white areas was and is still state of the art in relation to the conditions and the situation in many black areas including townships. Nothing much really has changed since the dawn of democracy. The current local government sphere is not structured in such a way that our people will be able to enjoy the same resources as compared to their white compatriots. The shift from apartheid history to the present is not visible and therefore there is an urgent need to change the situation lest our people will continue to suffer. It is our view that Local Government needs a rigorous and radical overall and restructuring such that it will begin to respond to the immediate needs of our people on the ground. In 2012, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon advised Pakistan to focus on people-centred development. He said this while inaugurating the Centre for International Peace and Stability at the army-run National University of Sciences and Technology. Mr Yusuf Shirazi, chairman of Atlas group of companies, who combines business acumen with scholarship, lamented that “ many developing countries are content in putting up a facade of development mainly for internal consumption as defensive reaction against rising expectations “. Ban Ki Moon elaborated his development approach in the following words, “Budget priorities should reflect people’s priorities: Education, health and energy, empowerment and good jobs- putting in place long term foundations of peace through sustainable development. The EFF will put more emphasis on these critical areas because they are key in the growth of the economy. While health and education are necessary for socially sustainable economic growth, empowerment and good jobs are essential to move towards social justice. Good jobs imply fair wages, and empowerment is necessary for teeming millions to fend for themselves. The core issue in people-centred development is to arrive at a right balance between accumulation and dispersal of capital, accumulation of new investments, and income distribution for making domestic markets prosperous. In South Africa, our finances are squandered by corrupt politicians and officials in various government departments and entities. In most cases government does not prioritise its expenditure in line with the people’s priorities. There is minimal consultation on the side of government. There is a need to move away from this approach to a development mentality which put people at the centre of development.
In 1996 South Africa formally adopted a new constitution, which characterised the local government sphere as the third sphere of government with constitutional mandate. This constitution has fundamentally changed the status of local government in the history of South Africa by giving this sphere the right to exist constitutional rights; as compare to what was the practice during apartheid era. The post 1994 political dispensation has created a fundamental paradigm shift- that South Africa is a Constitutional State, contrast to the apartheid regime where parliament was supreme to the constitution. This implies that the constitution of RSA is supreme and no law shall be allowed to undermine or to be inconsistent with its values. Section 151 of constitu1tion is explicit about the role local government: (1) the local sphere of government consists of municipalities, which must be established for the whole of the territory of the Republic. (2) The executive and legislative authority of a municipality is vested in its Municipal Council. (3) A municipality has the right to govern, on its own initiative, the local government affairs of its community, subject to national and provincial legislation, as provided for in the Constitution. (4) The national or a provincial government may not compromise or impede a municipality's ability or right to exercise its powers or perform its functions. Section 152, outlined the objects of local government to be –
A municipality must strive, within its financial and administrative capacity, to achieve the objects set out in subsection (1)
The Constitution has defined the local government sphere to be taking a developmental path. Subsequently to this constitutional decree of the local government sphere, the Municipal Demarcation Act no.27 of 1998 was enacted. Its mandate was to redefine municipality boundaries of 843 municipalities as per guidelines in section 25 of Demarcation Act. The demarcations excises manage to reduce municipalities to from 843 to 283 local municipalities. The first phase give birth to new municipality categorises of to six metros defined as Category A municipalities, 46 district municipalities defined as Category C municipality and 231 local municipalities defined as Category B municipality( Albert Venter & Chris Landsberg, 2011). Since 1998, the Local Government White paper became the foremost strategic catalyst for local government policy direction space. There were numerous pieces of legislation that were enacted after the adoption of the constitution, to strengthen local government sphere. Among others:
This act find its existence from section 214 of the constitution the intention of the act is stimulate working together between the three sphere of government, on budgetary and financial issues.
Its purpose is give advice on financial matters to state organs in all spheres of government.
It gives regulation and guidelines on which criteria to followed when establishing municipalities and it who to regulate internal systems of the municipality.
It regulates the conduct of Local government elections.
It provides regulation of how to operationalize internal processes and the functioning of municipality.
Its aims are to give guidelines on budgetary process, how to handle loans, debts, procedure on supply chain management and auditing.
It prescribes how municipalities should charge residents rates and taxes.
It seeks to give framework on how to facilitate intergovernmental relation from all spheres of government. In 2004 the ruling party did identify Local Government pitfalls and challenges and came up with a proposal called Project Consolidate to remedy the situation. The 2004 election campaign pointed to important immediate lessons for local government transformation. There is an urgent need to find innovative ways to:
The title themes of project consolidate” A Hands-On Local Government Engagement Programme for 2004-2006”. This theme is perfect empirical evidence that the ANC government was never hands on local government. Thus the culture of fraud, rampant corruption and nepotism and poor service delivery became in infused in local government sphere. The ruling party in 1994 made a bold claim that it had a plan and it was ready to govern. The truth of the matter, it is not, for it was deploying unqualified officials to administrate the massive developments and strategic entities. If the ANC was read to govern it should had deployed qualified personnel and prioritised good governance and put in place efficient monitoring and evaluation system. In 2004 we saw first delivery protest against poor service delivery and the system was unable to respond adequately to the promises it made to the citizens. During the 2004/05 financial year about 6,000 protests were officially recorded, an unknown number of protests went unrecorded, and about 1,000 protests were illegally banned. This meant that at least 15 protests were taking place each day in South Africa at this time. In his address Yunus Carrim, Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs at “National Council of Provinces Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Budget Vote Debate 23 April 2010” The protests are also about a range of other municipal issues, including maladministration, nepotism, fraud, corruption and the failure of councillors and administrators to listen to residents. But it is the rage of sections of the protestors and the extent of violence and destruction they wreak that is striking. It reflects a far more fundamental alienation of people from our democracy. It suggests an acute sense of marginalisation and social exclusion”. Figure 1: Major Service Delivery Protests, by Year (2004 – July 2012) [Source: Municipal IQ Municipal Hotspots Monitor] It is evident that Project consolidate was developed as a tool to manipulate communities during local government election, because all its recommendations immediately after elections were dished out by the ANC government. The level of corruption in local government kept on increasing, poor service delivery has been noted across the country. In 2009 the ruling party developed another new goal post shifting mechanism, the turnaround strategy. Problems that were identified by project consolidate were still there, the crises of maladministration and poor service delivery were deepening in local government sphere.
Report by Provincial assessments exposed those causal reasons for distress in municipal Governance pointed to:
Whilst all of the support programmes have assisted in specific ways, it is still clear that in a number of municipalities over a number of years. These remain consistently at the forefront of government’s developmental challenges. These priority areas include:
From evidence to date, it is clear that much of local government is indeed in distress, and that this state of affairs has become deeply-rooted within our system of governance. Therefore underpinning the analysis are some key questions, such as how deep-rooted is the state of distress in our local municipalities, what are the causes, and through what measures do we address these fault-lines in our governance arrangements? (COGTA, State of local government, 2009). The above analysis was done in 2009 by the ANC government; to date we still have municipalities who spend millions of rands to Consultancy Companies just to prepare a financial statement. North West municipalities have spent R29-million on consultants to help prepare financial statements for audit in the past financial year Currently three local municipalities namely, Ditsobotla in Lichtenburg, Matlosana in Klerksdorp and Maquassi Hills in Wolmaransstad – were under administration by the provincial government in efforts to get them on track to effectively manage their finances. The unnecessary use of consultants has been identified as one of the serious concerns in all spheres of government because consultants are often used even where there are people permanently employed to do the same job. The then Public Service and Administration Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said she would clamp down on the misuse of consultants by government. In 2012, none of the 24 municipalities and four municipal entities in the province received a clean audit for the second consecutive year. Fifteen municipalities either submitted their financial statements too late or not at all. Auditor-General, Terence Nombembe was so displeased that he said the local government leadership in the North West "does not take the message from my office seriously (Mail and Guardian 10 April, 2013). The comments made by the former minister were just a smokescreen. This is just a tip of an iceberg. Billions of Rands in local government from National Government that seek to enhance service delivery goes unspent, whilst there is a huge backlog of service delivery. The ANC in past 20 years has dismally failed to transform the sphere of local government. The EFF articulates the availability of government departments in all municipalities especially those that are essential to economic development. In this way, we will be able to speed up service delivery to our people. We will be able to meet the immediate needs of the people on the ground. Services like water and electricity should be nationalised and this should be administered by the local government. Monitoring of provision of such services should be effective, lest the intended purpose of such an arrangement may not be realised.
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