Erasibo Consulting

On the 2nd December 2009 the South African cabinet approved the Local Government Turnaround strategy. A copy can be downloaded from here.

The strategy states that the root cause of much of the failure in municipalities is because of:

• Inappropriate national and provincial government policies, practices and onerous requirements;
• Socio-economic conditions prevailing in many municipalities that are not been adequately addressed through macro, micro-economic and industrial policies and plans of the State;
• Political parties that are undermining the integrity and functioning of municipal councils through intra and inter-party conflicts and inappropriate interference in councils and administration;
• A breakdown of values at a societal level that is breeding unethical behaviour, corruption, culture of non-payment, and lack of accountability;
• Communities that are engaging in destructive forms of protest including withholding of payment for local taxes and services;
• Those municipalities that are not geared for delivering basic services and are not responsive and accountable enough to residents; including to failure to involve communities in their own development;
• Absence of communications resources (people, technology, equipment processes) and no accountability for how and when municipalities communicate to communities

For the most part the strategy is impressive. However (unfortunately this is a common gap with public sector strategy documents ), there is zero allowance for the possibility that this turnaround may not meet the deadlines or intentions it sets.

The local government sphere is not homogenous, the department (Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs) is going to need to be aggressive about the implementation of this turnaround strategy.

Last night the Riverlea community took to the streets protesting poor service delivery by local government. Riverlea is the latest community to vent its frustrations angrily about poor municipal service delivery.

Since the new national government administration has come in there has been a lot of change taking place in the local government space. A lot of reviewing, rethinking and restructuring has taken place.

The current Director General Elroy Africa delivered the presentation above yesterday at the Local Government Indaba. Its a frank, harsh presentation outlining the problem areas in local government, it’s great to see this type of presentation and suggestions it contains.

However I still think there is one thing missing what is the model that we are hoping to building local government into? Setting targets around which services should be delivered and improving the execution ability is good but without knowing what the game plan is, we could be spending a lot additional time and money to arrive at a similar state later, because everyone busies themselves with being busy.

In June 2009 the Minister of Local Government made this hard hitting statement:

“…I am taking the liberty of sharing this experience with this assembly to argue that if the North West is indicative, in any way, of what is happening in our municipalities in the other eight provinces then we need to declare a national state of emergency on local government in this country…This is a sector that is perceived to be incompetent, disorganised and riddled with corruption and maladministration….During several research surveys conducted regarding public perception on spheres of government, local government has always scored the lowest…..Even the latest research results points to that sad perception. For that matter, the results show that the public rating of municipalities is at an all-time low…”
Minister Sicelo Shiceka – SALGA NMA – 10 June 2009, East London

Apart from heavy hitting speeches there has been action, I thought I’d note one set of investigations that has already taken place:

Investigators submit preliminary report on Mkhondo municipality

3 September 2009

The team of investigators appointed by the Mpumalanga provincial government, in terms of section 106(1)(b) of the Local Government Municipal Systems Act, 2000 (act No.32 of 2000), to investigate allegations of maladministration, fraud, corruption, nepotism, poor service delivery, poor implementation of the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and lack of proper consultation in terms of resource distribution and infrastructure made against the Mkhondo local municipality has submitted its preliminary report to the provincial government.

The report has indicated the following findings:
On financial mismanagement, the investigation report has revealed that there has been mismanagement of moneys allocated for projects. There have also been municipal officials found to have been paid unduly. Such moneys must be recouped and implicated officials should face disciplinary hearing. Some officials and councillors have been found to have misused municipal credit cards. The use of credit cards has been discontinued by the Administrator. There was no policy to deal with credit cards.

The administrator will immediately set up a policy on use of council credit cards. Disciplinary hearings will be held against the implicated officials. In most municipalities the use of credit cards has been long stopped.

Fleet management

The preliminary report has also indicated that there was a lack of proper monitoring and accountability on municipal vehicles, which led to the misuse of government fleet and wastage of fuel. The administrator has started putting systems in place to minimise the abuse of council resources.

With regards to employment of personnel, the findings have indicated that there have been cases where individuals were employed illegally in breach of the employment procedures. These dubious appointments will be probed further and individuals found to have been wrongfully employed will be dealt with severely.

The municipality has started designing new policies and systems that will ensure that all employees and employees of the municipality are appointed in a transparent manner based on their skills and competencies. Nepotism is a punishable offence. Disciplinary action will commence immediately against all implicated individuals.

The administrator will be given four months to conclude all outstanding matters on the investigations, and MEC Norman Mokoena will oversee the process. The provincial government would like to thank the community for cooperating with the administrator and his team during the period the municipality has been put under administration.

Enquiries:
Mabutho Sithole
Cell: 082 398 3348

Simphiwe Kunene
Cell: 082 413 3931

Vusi Mashabane
Cell: 076 762 6510

Issued by: Office of the Premier, Mpumalanga Provincial Government
3 September 2009
Source: Mpumalanga Provincial Government (http://www.mpumalanga.gov.za/)

We need to start seeing municipal officials being fired or prosecuted, we need to see councillors held directly accountable. There is a lot of talk about this taking place, lets see it happen. Its the only way to get those in power at the municipal level to take their mandates more seriously.