This week, Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma led a two-day summit, with numerous guests including the President, to discuss a host of topics aimed at fixing our failing and broken local government system. 

The speakers covered a range of matters, including the rehashed notion of the aged District Development Model, strategies that will attract investment to municipalities, ethical leadership initiatives, and insights of the Local Government Anti-Corruption Forum (LGACF). 

Many civil society organisations (who are part of the LGACF) could not attend because they only received an invitation about five days before the conference. The real issue, however, was that civil society was largely missing in the list of speakers who aired their concerns and solutions for fixing the mess that our municipalities and metros have become. 

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Municipalities with poor audit outcomes need support, says Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma”

and:  Municipal officials set out problems before Ramaphosa at local government summit

The opening speech by Dlamini Zuma gives credence to how far removed government leadership is from the systemic issues that require attention. She stated the obvious: For a well-functioning local government we require “capable, ethical, principled and capacitated leaders everywhere but particularly in the council and administration of the municipality”, with “leaders having the astuteness to understand their roles and functions”, and that “in an ideal municipality there is a culture of accountability and political will to realise change to create a conducive environment for effective oversight” with “zero tolerance for poor performance and transgressions”. Lovely words but in reality this was hollow waffle and lip service that seeks to put lipstick on a pig. 

The excessive rising cost of local government

A serious matter that has been overlooked by national and provincial governments, let alone the municipalities themselves, is the relentless excessive rising cost of local government, putting pressure on the pockets of society at large. 

One only needs to consider the local government financial year ending June 2008, and see the tariff hike trends and grants from national and provincial governments over the past 13 years. In that year, just more than a decade into democracy, the total revenue of all municipalities and metros (operating income and capital grants from national and provincial), amounted to just more than R150-billion. About 76% of that income came from direct municipal operations (property rates, electricity, refuse, fines, etc). Today, the total revenue sucked out of the pockets of citizens and taxpayers is close to R500-billion per annum, with about 84% from direct operations – the residents. 

The message is clear: the cost of local government to society has increased by about 40% higher than the combined impact of inflation and GDP over the past 13 years. In simple terms, the cost of taxes and services from local government has been grossly excessive by 40% more than it ought to be today. 

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The questions any local government summit should be asking are: How did this come to be? What must be done to arrest this dire situation?

Furthermore, 13 years ago most of the now defunct municipalities were cash-positive and providing reasonable services to residents and businesses. 

The answer to success is within our borders

We don’t have to look anywhere else across our borders or overseas to find the answers to our failed municipalities, as Dlamini Zuma suggested in her speech. All we need to do is pick out the top-performing municipalities in each category and size within South Africa. Therein, the Department of Cooperative Governance and Treasury will discover the formulas for municipal success in our own backyard. This kind of benchmarking is not rocket science. 

My calculated guess is that within South Africa’s top-performing municipalities and metros they will find a few golden threads for success, including: expertise employed in operations and administration; consequences for poor individual performance; and minimising political interference. It is quite the opposite in our bankrupt and defunct municipalities, where they will find: ineptitude; little accountability; and political meddling in procurement and spending. All of which leads to higher operational costs, more consultants and very little left over for service delivery and maintenance. 

Where is the oversight management and leadership?

What Dlamini Zuma and her department’s leadership, at national and provincial level, fail to comprehend is that nothing will change while people feel safe in producing declining results, while receiving fat salaries and bonuses. During her tenure, not a single senior Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs official or provincial executive council member (MEC) has been disciplined and fired for their lack of meaningful oversight and poor performance, when it comes to the continuous demise of municipalities within their domain. Year after year, the Auditor-General has slapped them with audit reports that depict a gross dereliction of duty, yet the minister’s office and all the MECs prance around with gay abandon, as if this is a trivial matter that requires no accountability from themselves. 

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Virtually all the accounting officers in the many failed municipalities have retained their jobs (outside of the new council shuffles following the recent local elections), despite their gross failure to fulfil the basic financial hygiene requirements to manage the money of their towns or cities. And all the grant money that failed municipalities do not qualify for continues to be paid, only to be squandered on overpriced tenders with poor-quality delivery. 

Read more in Daily Maverick: “More than quarter of SA’s municipalities are on brink of financial collapse, warns AG”

Now is the time for the government to be bold and to intervene by finding solutions to reduce rates and tariff increases to below inflation for the next decade. Municipalities need to take zero-based budgeting seriously, and to question the need for every employed position and contractor agreements that exist.  

When it comes to evaluating what businesses and residents get in return for the rates and (sometimes non-existent) services they pay for, South Africa must have the most expensive and least impressive cities and towns to live and work in. 

The question I have for every participant at this week’s local government summit is thus: Do you honestly believe for one minute that the two days spent in deliberations and plans to fix local government will have any meaningful impact or tangible outcomes, for the residents in the bottom-half performing towns and cities in South Africa? Here’s my bet – never, nada, nothing. 

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Only 41 municipalities register clean audits, with Western Cape leading the pack  – and Free State at the bottom”

In two to three years things will be worse, barring the top quartile municipalities that appear to exercise the necessary discipline and leadership. In addition, other than a few cases, the bulk of non-performing individuals in local government will still be employed, and the cost of local government will have increased well above inflation. DM