Development Plan (IDP) Mini Conference on the future and role of
provinces
7 May 2007
Debates emerging out of the process towards the Provincial Growth
Development Strategy (PGDS) and the review of IDPs are beginning to show that
our debate around the future and role of provinces in our governance set-up is
still an unformed debate. We are missing each other in this debate and
therefore are in danger of missing the real complexity in the role of the
sub-national sphere within a developmental state.
The debate about provinces cannot simply be about their numbers, should
there be nine or four provinces? This does not mean that the number of
provinces will or should not be reduced, but the starting point is not the
number, that is an outcome of a more complex debate.
On the other hand the opposition is simplifying the debate to one of power
by raising the idea that the debate on provinces is to gerrymander an election
outcome. This only confirms their absence from real governance and the
challenges that go with it.
The debate, judging by the lessons out of the IDP and PGDS, has to be about
the developmental role of provinces. The role of provinces has been brought
into sharp focus at the Metro Growth and Development Summit when Cape Town
spoke about fulfilling only their constitutional mandate over basic services,
basic infrastructure and such like. They did not share the urgency about job
creation and economic growth.
Given that nations compete globally more effectively at the sub-national
level, whether provincial/national, metropolitan, district or municipal we need
to discuss what constitutes this substantial level, how do they interrelate and
how do their collective efforts ensure that on the ground relevance informs the
national policy efforts.
In fact our experience is that local government boundaries, in addition to
standing on constitutional mandates, are maybe too small to ensure a real
developmental impact. This gives rise to the idea of functional regions. These
do not threaten jurisdictional boundaries or authority, but creates the need
for a sphere that can ensure cross-boundary or functional planning.
Examples abound:
* If Cape Town frees land in Atlantis for housing the spoor, they will only
reinforce bad apartheid planning if there is no co-ordination and joint
planning with Saldanhabaai and its plans for economic growth. It is here that
province has an overview and therefore a critical role.
* Can the three million people of Cape Town deal with the impact of global
warming if there is not an overview discussion with the Overberg where our
water catchments are, is critical and which provides the lifeblood to Cape
Town.
* Similarly you cannot plan for public transport if the discussion does not
cross jurisdictional boundaries.
If we do not define a developmental role for provinces and if we do not
allow for such sub-national governance to ensure that we locate planning
mechanisms at the level of functional regions then we will have parochialism
and non-developmental governance. It is at functional regional level that the
sub-national develops economically and competes globally.
Sub-national governance at provincial level has a more immediate sense of
the economic geography: the direction of economic activity, the direction of
investment, the optimal economic sectors to grow, the movement of people in
search of opportunity, the location of infrastructure and the location of
services.
But often sub-national governance provincial and local does not have the
wherewithal (mandates and resources) to respond to these developmental
challenges and unless this function is built into the definition of the role of
provinces, then provinces will be a powerless entity within a developmental
state and will increasingly become discredited.
On the other hand, there has to be a review of provinces. Realities 13 years
later have thrown up anomalies none more so than between the Western Cape and
the Eastern Cape. Apartheid has specifically underdeveloped the Eastern Cape,
creating a combination of extreme and general poverty with an institutional and
infrastructural deficit. These factors combine to create poverty indexes that
correctly give the Eastern Cape a net increase in fiscal transfers from
national. But the gap remains between the new money and the capacity for and
rate of service delivery and institutional improvement. The poor then use their
own economic intelligence to migrate to where housing, jobs, pensions and
schools are more efficiently distributed. However, the Eastern Cape money does
not follow the poor.
On the other hand, the Western Cape has been the perverse beneficiary of
apartheid resulting in a lower poverty index and therefore negative fiscal
flows. But its institutional capacities to deliver services and opportunities
to the poor means that the poor migrate to it and then put pressure on services
which ironically have to cope with budget cuts.
The fact that money cannot follow people may well mean that if the two
provinces were combined, both would benefit from the poverty index and fiscal
flows so that where people go for services can be kept functioning while the
institutional capacity can be spread equitably.
So the debate about the future of provinces is not a simple debate. It has
to be approached in a way that ensures the fundamental questions, 'what does
our developmental State need at this point?'
At the end of the day the intergovernmental regime we have will be crucial
if we are to allow the sub-national spheres to look well after its people and
to compete globally.
Issued by: Office of the Premier, Western Cape Provincial Government
7 May 2007
