We, the over 1 100 participants in the National Indaba on Local Government, including representatives from the three spheres of government, the private sector, trade unions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), traditional leaders, professional organisations, experts and other sections of civil society, acknowledge the challenges raised in the state of local government in South Africa report, and commit ourselves to working together to address them.
We acknowledge the indispensable role local government has to play in consolidating democracy and advancing service delivery and development and our responsibilities to ensure that it effectively fulfils this role. We recognise that the success of our democracy depends crucially on an efficient, effective, responsive and accountable local government sphere. We agree that local government is everyone’s business.
We note this historic opportunity to reflect upon the state of local government in our country, and welcome the frank and significantly accurate report compiled by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs and the provincial departments of local government. We particularly welcome the unique process through which this report was drawn, and the fact that it is substantially an outcome of a hands-on and inter-active assessment of every municipality in our country.
We note too the valuable and unprecedented meeting held between the President of the country and the mayors and municipal managers of our 283 municipalities in Khayelitsha on 20 October, and welcome the President’s commitment to practically responding, in cooperation with the Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, to the concerns raised with him.
We believe that there has been significant progress in local government since 1994, but acknowledge that there are major shortcomings that need to be collectively and urgently addressed. The community protests that break out in the country constantly convey the need for us all to act swiftly and decisively to ensure that local government is more effective. They also convey the need for provincial and local government to support local government more actively and, further, also fulfil their own respective functions more effectively.
While recognising that the responsibilities to make local government work lie mainly with councillors, officials and local communities, national and provincial government have crucial roles to play. Ultimately, the failures of local government are the failures of the cooperative governance system as a whole and we call for more efficient, effective and cohesive cooperative governance in this country. We believe that the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs has a major role to play in this regard and in particular ensure that it serves as a single window of coordination for the relationship of national government departments with local government. We support the department’s proposal on a Green Paper and a White Paper on Cooperative Governance.
We believe that it is important that we have a more effective system of evaluating municipal performance, and in this regard, call for a review of the Municipal Performance Excellence (Vuna) Awards within a period of six months.
We recommend all stakeholders in local government and the public read the state of local government in South Africa report or summaries of it. As a brief overview of our discussions on the report, we note the following:
* The local government system is relatively new and still developing
* Overall, there is significant progress in implementing the local government system
* There are many good practices in municipalities that tend, unfortunately, to get overshadowed by the better-known failures of municipalities
* Municipalities have made a significant contribution to eradicating infrastructure and service delivery backlogs, even if there is still a long way to go
* Each municipality has different and specific needs and challenges and a “once size fits all” approach will not do
* There has been increasing support to local government, including through funding.
However, we are concerned that:
* significant numbers of people have not yet received the municipal services to which they are entitled
* in most cases, the ward committees and other structures of community participation in local government are not functioning effectively
* in most cases, here is a significant lack of communication between councillors and communities.
We are further concerned that many municipalities are in distress due to internal and external factors such as:
* Demographic patterns and trends such as in-migration, household growth, rural-urban migration and growth of informal settlements
* Macro and micro economic conditions such as structural unemployment, a declining or limited revenue base, tax evasion and the current economic recession
* Inadequate inter-governmental relations reflected in weaknesses in policy and regulatory frameworks, voluntarism, fragmented support to local government, poor oversight and unfunded mandates
* Political management and stability of municipal councils affected by intra and inter-political party conflicts, inappropriate interference by political parties and limited ability of councils to develop and enforce by-laws
* Largely dysfunctional professional administration and management due to lack of skilled staff, unqualified staff and inappropriate appointments, absence of competency frameworks and professional registration requirements
* Breakdown and lack of proper financial management systems and controls that lead to poor prioritisation and budgeting, mismanagement and fraud and corruption
* Weak accountability characterised by poor mechanisms of community consultation and feedback, no complaint management systems, weak communication with communities and poorly supported ward committees.
While these challenges may be many and may seem daunting, we are confident that we can, with will and determination, as part of a phased, pragmatic turnaround strategy overcome them over time.
We commit ourselves to the national framework local government turnaround strategy discussed at this indaba. This framework is based on:
* Understanding and addressing root causes of problems faced by municipalities
* Learning from previous local government support programmes and interventions
* Making local government everyone’s business
* Promoting “good citizenship” that is underpinned by governance values such as ethical behaviour, transparency and accountability of public office, loyalty to the Constitution, volunteerism and community service amongst others
* Building ward-based systems and developing effective, efficient and accountable municipalities wherever we live and work
* Laying a differentiated framework for each municipality to identify and adopt its own Turn-Around and/or improvement strategies and actions.
We believe that this strategy should, among other issues, address the following issues:
* Strengthening political accountability to citizens while building inclusive communities that are partners in their own development and destiny
* Developing a common classification of municipalities and a differentiated approach for municipalities, because the current one-size-fits-all approach will not address our challenges appropriately
* Reviewing the legislative and regulatory framework of local government
* Addressing poverty arising both from urban growth and migration and the persistent legacy of rural under-development
* Reviewing the financial and fiscal model to respond to asymmetrical economic patterns
* strengthening financial management and accountability
* Rooting out corruption in all its forms
* Ensuring an appropriate role for traditional leaders in local government
* Identifying and addressing areas of dysfunctional amongst municipalities, including through improved managerial practices and relevant and quality training and education.
We feel that the relationship between the national framework local government turnaround strategy and the policy review of provincial and local government initiated by the government needs to be clarified over time.
We believe this national framework local government turnaround strategy should be discussed further with more stakeholders over the next few weeks before it’s finalised by government. We fully support the proposal that the turnaround strategy be taken to every municipality in the country, and commit ourselves to playing a role in this process.
We believe that every municipality should, within the parameters of the national framework local government turnaround strategy, develop, through a fully consultative process, its own specific municipal turnaround plan by March 2010 and actively implement it through involving the widest range of stakeholders and local communities. We believe that provincial governments should play an active role in assisting municipalities to develop these Municipal Turnaround Plans and ensuring that they are within the national framework local government turnaround strategy.
We support the formation of a national coordinating committee, comprising a wide range of a stakeholders and experts, to monitor progress in the implementation of the framework national local government turnaround strategy. We believe provinces and municipalities should also set up municipal turnaround strategy coordinating committees.
We are very encouraged by this indaba and feel that such an indaba should be held annually. But we are clear that future Indabas should not just monitor government progress, but the progress of all of us collectively here. After all, we all have a responsibility to implement the framework national local government turnaround strategy.
Local government, as we say, is everybody’s business!
Issued by: Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs
22 October 2009
Source: Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (http://www.thedplg.gov.za/)
