PERSPECTIVES
CHAPTER 4: RURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN A SOUTH AFRICAN CONTEXT
4.3 LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA
4.3.5 The Current State of Local Government in South Africa
Since the new democratic local government regime in 2000, local government has undoubtedly contributed to substantial social and economic growth in South Africa contributing to a number of notable social and economic development accomplishments. A majority of communities in the country now have better access to a wider choice of essential services, as well as more possibilities to participate in the economy. Local government was assigned a crucial developmental role in reconstructing local communities and environments under the new regime, as the foundation for a democratic, integrated, wealthy, and non-racial society (Siddle &
Koelble, 2016). Most individuals in the country now have access to a wide range of basic services supplied by local government, notably local municipalities, including basic services
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such as power, water, sanitation, roads, housing, and waste management. Municipalities in the country provide almost all of the developmental services that people receive, possibly because they are seen as the service points nearest to them. Local governments, on the other hand, have faced a slew of obstacles since the concession that have jeopardized their ability to grow and deliver services to disadvantaged local areas (Madumo & Koma, 2019). The growing number of protests across the country reflects residents’ dissatisfaction and frustration with local governments’ failure to offer appropriate basic services. Additionally, some local governments have recently been in the spotlight and under investigation for all the wrong reasons, such as maladministration and corruption.
Despite the important role that municipalities have played in the new democracy, crucial aspects of the local government system are in distress. Municipal performance across the country continues to show significant flaws and inadequacies in meeting its constitutional and legislative requirements; for example, according to the Auditor General’s 2017 Report, only 13% of municipalities had clean audits in the 2016/2017 fiscal year (Madumo & Koma, 2018; Auditor- General 2018). According to Brand (2018), the Auditor General’s Report indicated that over 30% of municipalities are in such a bad financial state that they are no longer sustainable.
According to Siddle and Koelble (2016), one-third of the country’s municipalities are considered dysfunctional. As a result, the majority of these towns are unable to carry out their constitutionally mandated development responsibilities. Madumo and Koma (2018) further maintain that most local municipalities in provinces such as Kwa-Zulu Natal, Mpumalanga, and the North West are currently under administration and are managed by administrators appointed by their provincial governments due to their failure to comply with Section 152 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. The effectiveness of municipal performance can be measured primarily against these legislative and the constitutional prescripts. As a result, the ideal functioning municipality can be judged against such constitutional metrics.
Lack of proper financial and management skills, political meddling, infighting in councils, lack of political will, and failure to fill key personnel roles are all factors that contribute to poor performance and failure of towns (Brand, 2018). The political leadership of a municipality is
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crucial to its efficient operation. The emergence of new political alliances and elites, as well as party political factionalism and polarization of interests over the previous few years, have all contributed to the continuous deterioration of municipal functionality. These contestations among local elites contaminate relationships at the local level. The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) identified massive service delivery and backlog challenges, poor communication, lack of accountability, a paralyzed political administrative interface, political instability, corruption, and fraud as key issues attributed to local government failures. Inadequate internal controls, financial governance, maladministration, community unrest, protests, poor involvement of civil society organizations, and inadequate institutional capacity due to a lack of technical skills were among the other issues (Madumo & Koma, 2018;
Madumo, 2012; CoGTA, 2009). According to a CoGTA memorandum of 2014, institutional incapacity and widespread poverty have harmed the local government project's long-term viability, resulting in major service breakdowns in some cases. The memorandum went on to explain some of the issues that local governments face which include the following (Siddle &
Koelble, 2016; CoGTA, 2014):
• A collapse in core municipal infrastructure services in some communities, resulting in inadequate provision of services; slow or inadequate responses to service delivery challenges are in turn linked to the breakdown of trust in the institutions and councillors by communities.
• Inadequate public participation and poorly functioning ward councillors and committees.
• The viability of certain municipalities is a key concern, with the low rate of collection of revenue continuing to undermine the ability of municipalities to deliver services to communities.
• Municipalities need to be driven by appropriately skilled personnel and their correct placement, but there are far too many instances both of inappropriate placements and skills not measuring up to requirements.
• Widespread instances of rent-seeking and corruption amongst public representatives and business.
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These flaws create a gloomy picture of how local government fails to fulfil its constitutional purpose. Today, the public perceives local government as a domain of government beset by administrative, governance, capacity, and political flaws that have resulted in corruption, fraud, maladministration, and poor service delivery (Siddle & Koelble, 2016). These contestations among local elites contaminate the relationships at the local level. The democratisation of local government, as envisioned in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa and the White Paper on Local Government, is now laden with community dissatisfaction due to poor system institutionalization, service delivery, and political governance. In many municipalities, a culture of patronage and nepotism has become so pervasive that the formal municipal accountability system has become inefficient and unavailable to many inhabitants. Thus, despite a number of notable achievements, South Africa’s local government trajectory has been untenable to a greater extent and smooth to a lesser extent over the last two decades since 2000. Today, the local government system has a low level of citizen confidence and trust. This has been publicly demonstrated in a series of community protests in recent years, which might be interpreted as a symptom of residents’ alienation from local authority.