Remarks by Minister Thembi Nkadimeng at the 2023 SACN Urban Festival
Programme Director,
SACN Council Chair Mr. Xola Phakati,
SACN Board Chairperson Ms. Yolisa Kani,
City managers from the respective metropolitans,
Delegation from SALGA,
Academia and private sector,
Officials and delegates,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning to you all,
I first would like to express my sincere gratitude for this opportunity to participate in the Urban Festival of 2023. It is an honour to have been given this platform during the culmination of this year’s Urban October. As we commemorate this traditional month-long celebration and take stock of our collective achievements, it is important that we engage in meaningful discussions regarding the critical factors that significantly shape and advance our urban agenda.
Being a part of this Urban Festival is not only an opportunity I value, but also a recognition of the importance of urban development and its multifaceted impacts on our communities and societies. As you all know, urban areas are dynamic hubs of innovation, culture, and progress, and they also present unique challenges that require our attention and collaborative efforts.
As we gather at the Urban Festival, we are presented with a valuable opportunity to explore and address key issues that influence the trajectory of our urban development. It is a time for reflection, discussion, and, most importantly, action. We must acknowledge that while we have made considerable progress in creating more sustainable, inclusive, and vibrant urban environments, there is still much work to be done.
The theme for the urban fest 2023 is: The Working City: ACTIONS FOR GROWTH AND RECOVERY. Allow me to engage you all on a fundamental issue that is critical to the theme of the fest and that is “Institutional resilience for local government in South Africa”.
I will also reflect on some of the relevant issues and challenges that underscore the need for an institutionally resilient local government sector and the use of data-driven decision-making to respond to these challenges and achieve greater institutional resilience.
Before we commence, it’s essential that we establish a clear understanding that South African local municipalities bear a constitutional responsibility, as outlined in Section 152 of the 1996 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, the 1998 White Paper on Local Government, and the Municipal Systems Act No. 32 of 2000. These legal frameworks distinctly define the obligations and functions of municipalities.
These obligates and duties are imperative towards fulfilling our responsibility to the citizens of the country. We must therefore ensure that as local government we are able to perform, deliver and enhance our obligations in a resilient manner. We must also be able to respond to shocks effectively and strengthen our capability as local government towards creating a developmental and resilient state.
As The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, it is our duty to ensure that all municipalities perform their basic responsibilities and functions consistently by:
- Putting people and their concerns first;
- Supporting the delivery of municipal services to the right quality and standard;
- Promoting good governance, transparency and accountability;
- Ensuring sound financial management and accounting; and
- Building institutional resilience and administrative capability.
We as national government and supported by province and SALGA have an obligation to ensure that our municipalities comply with their legislative requirements but also support local government were necessary to ensure they are capable of executing their responsibilities in line with the systems and requirements set out in legislation that governs the establishment and functioning for local government.
As a country we have the National Development Plan as our long-term plan and defines our long-term destination tackling key challenges faced within the country. The NDP also requires us to build a capable and developmental State by dealing with issues of political stability, capacity within government, strengthening intergovernmental relations.
The Department has been actively attempting to support municipalities through the development and implementation of various policies and programmes. The back-to-basics programme focused on building institutional resilience through strengthening institutional capacity programmes for the three spheres of government with the notion of supporting, monitoring, intervening and enforcing the responsibilities of national, provincial and local government in building institutional resilience.
We currently have approximately 66 dysfunctional municipalities in our country that have multidimensional challenges and related to poor governance, weak institutional capacity, poor financial management and political instability, which ultimately affects service delivery to our communities. COGTA is focusing its efforts towards supporting these dysfunctional municipalities and has established systems and programmes to ensure that we improve the status of our distressed municipalities.
Let’s now provide some context for the challenges confronting municipalities in South Africa. Our municipalities are marked by and confronted with a series of issues, including elevated levels of poverty and unemployment, inadequate or ineffective delivery of essential services, hurdles linked to bolstering our local economies, striving for spatial transformation, addressing skills and capacity constraints required to carry out our local government responsibilities, and in certain cases, grappling with political and administrative instability.
Creating an institutionally resilient local government will set the foundation for local government to respond to some of the key economic, social and built environment challenges that are faced by our municipalities and our communities at large.
As a country we are working together to eliminate these key challenges we are faced with, as mentioned we have the NDP, we also have the NSDF through the leadership of DALRRD focusing on our spatial challenges and guiding our development priorities as a country.
The State of Cities Report IV identified that spatial transformation is about more than understanding spatial relationships and requires changes in power and politics, institutions and intergovernmental relations and management skills and capacity.
We in this regard, have developed the IUDF aimed at addressing spatial transformation in our metros, intermediate cities and small towns. The IUDF clearly defines the importance of a stable governance system, this is defined in Policy lever 8 of the IUDF with the aim of managing the intergovernmental dynamics within municipalities and to manage multiple fiscal, political and accountability tensions in order to fulfil their developmental and growth mandates.
We also have the CWP focusing on creating employment opportunities and servicing our communities and the Municipal Infrastructure Grant which aims to eradicate municipal infrastructure backlogs in poor communities to ensure the provision of basic services such as water, sanitation, roads and community lighting.
We are also working through the District Development Model (DDM) to improve intergovernmental relations between the different spheres of government to tackle the problems in distressed municipalities. The DDM is designed to address problems with service delivery by allowing all spheres of government, from local municipalities to national government, to work together in a more effective and coordinated way.
Although we have these key national policy directives we must acknowledge that the world is advancing and so to must our municipalities, technology and use of data is a key driver in the 4th industrial revolution, the world is advancing and so must south Africa. We must acknowledge the role that data through the various systems such as GIS can play in leveraging some of the key challenges faced by local government.
These systems can be used to improve service delivery in municipalities through the process of capturing issues, spatially representing the data which will guide analysis, guide the prioritisation of the required interventions and monitoring the impact of delivery. These systems have the ability to improve municipal capability through tracking and processing of its administrative responsivities such development and building plan applications and can also improve municipal finance management through improving revenue collection on municipal services.
From an international perspective, countries are advanced and particularly I would like to cite work done by China and the city of Shanghai, which is the, The Shanghai trio of interrelated tools, the Shanghai Adapted Index (SAI), the Shanghai Manual, and the Global Award for Sustainable Development (Shanghai Award). These tools are designed to support effective implementation of urban sustainability at the local level. The Shanghai Adapted Index is the first adaptation of the Global Urban Monitoring Framework that provides a graded index system to measure progress on sustainable urban development and their contribution to the SDGs and New Urban Agenda.
But bringing it back home we have also made progress and the eThekwini Metro’s Strat Hub can be viewed as an exceptional tool which is viewed as the City of Durban’s ‘Single Source of Truth’ that is co-created through internal and external partnerships.
This tool has supported policy interventions and actions related to urban safety; road safety; disaster response; climate risk and vulnerability mapping to name a few. Specifically on urban safety, the Strat Hub is supporting the implementation efforts related to the 2023 GC 26 resolution on Safer Cities and the adoption of the UN System wide guidelines in 2019.
We must learn through our local and international best practice models and maximise the opportunities that data and technology can offer us in advancing our priority issues.
As I conclude I would like to stress the importance of creating an institutional resilient local government, it is clear that the foundation of a developmental and resilience state is heavily dependent on sound institutions. Our primary focus should be to do the best we can as government for the people that matter the most and that is our communities.
I would also like to thank the South African Cities Network for the valuable contributions made in supporting our municipalities over the years. I look forward to us all continuing to work together. I wish you well in the Urban Fest 2023, and I hope you will derive value from the session today and make a difference for our people.
I thank you,
