SECTION I 7.21.1.14 Policy
3.14 LOCAL GOVERNMENT RESTRUCTURING IN SOUTH AFRICA
The responsibility for building the institutional framework that would manage development has fallen on local government. Local elates were also competing over the definition of local state and for political control over the ward demarcation and local electoral process They also had to build local management capacity both in government and in civil society, and had to secure sufficient financial resources to fund local development.
These challenges were to unfold within the legislative framework set out by the Local Government Transitional Act 209 of 1993 (LGTA). The LGTA made provision for (Reddy 1996:59):
• the pre-interim and interim phase for the restructuring of local government;
• the establishment of provincial committees for local government;
• the establishment of local forum for negotiating the restructured form of local government in each area for pre-interim period; and
• provincial demarcation boards to set the boundaries of local authorities and delimit the electoral wards within them.
The pre-interim phase ran from the promulgation of the Act (February 1994) until the local government elections in November 1995 (elections delayed in KZN until June 1996). A number of steps were required during this phase oflocal government transition.
First, local government negotiating forums were established. Second, old apartheid structures had to be abolished and replaced with pre-interim local government structures.
Pursuit to the provisions of the LGT A, this process was negotiated through the Greater Durban Metropolitan Negotiating Forum (GDMNF). Half the members of the forum were drawn from a statutory component of the former local government established while the other non-statutory half of the members were drawn from those who were previously excluded from local government. The DMC was established covering an area previously governed by 52 local authorities of various kinds. Four transitional local councils (TLC)
were also established and functions were assigned to each level of council in accordance with the LGTA provisions for the pre-interim phase of local government. However, although these structures were proclaimed there, nevertheless, remained considerable confusion over their roles during the pre-interim period? According to one summary report:
This lack of clarity has contributed to a delay in the formulation and execution of development initiatives in the different areas. This tendency has been exacerbated in those areas which are currently engaged in boundary disputes. There remains a level of confusion in some areas about the spatial extent of administrative responsibility regarding service provision.
While this overall evolution was especially applicable to rural districts and small towns throughout KZN, the DMA was no exception.
Although DCC had undergone a restructuring in 1993 it still suffers from a lack of co- ordination across line functions. For example, statutory planning functions were located in Development Control and Physical Services, whereas strategic planning was located in Town Planning and Corporate Services. Similarly, public transport administration was located in Durban Transport while traffic and transport planning functions were located in Traffic and Transportation and Physical Environment. In addition, there was a general emphasis on control and regulation capacities in council rather than community facilitation and development support.
This fractured nature of development and planning responsibilities would assume ever greater importance throughout the pre-interim period of local government as the policy frameworks developed at national level had to inform the newly defined levels of responsibility at metropolitan and sub structure levels of government.
A major challenge facing the newly constituted TMC in Durban was how to avoid a top- down policy approach in the absence of an overall development framework in the DMA.
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While the new political structures of the TMC and the 4 TLCs were democratically constituted, they were only statutory rather than elected and therefore lacked the legitimacy to carry through a full scale development programme. To guide the broader process of administrative restructuring a change management committee comprised 8 members of the transitional metropolitan council and two members from each of the four- substructure council was convened. In the absence of either an overall development plan, or the desired legitimacy of elected government, ad-hoc relationships tended to predominate development initiatives throughout the DMA.
In the pre-interim period there was considerable role confusion over housing responsibility at the local level. Local officials and politicians agreed that the division of powers between local and metropolitan councils was unclear. In this period housing remained a substructure function but metropolitan government held responsibility for co- ordinating across the region and gearing finances from central government and other finance sources. According to one municipal councillor, the actual home for housing responsibilities remained in hot dispute throughout the pre interim period of local government. The TMC Change Management Committee was discussing where best to invest the housing function.
Meanwhile, in the absence of a holistic development plan, municipal staff ran things on an ad-hoc day-to-day racial basis with money allocated on a project by project basis.
Prior to 1994, state financed accommodation was allocated in accordance with the directives of the directives of the tri-cameral administration until 31 March 1994 and thereafter on a non-racial basis. Consistent with the national trend way from demand-side intervention such as council housing, and price controls, DCC housing has moved to favour supply-side schemes such as housing support in line with the housing subsidy process.
Under the previous system the DCC would advance capital grants which were subsidised by national government. DCC retained ownership title of the housing unit and the
residents then paid off the grant in instalments over a 30 year period to effect ownership transfer. As of May 31 1994 the DCC still administered a substantial number of housing accounts. Of a total of 35 538 units, DCC was letting 17 547 and was in the process of selling the remaining 17 889.
In an effort to reduce the holding and maintenance costs of housing, the remaining 17,000 DCC units were put up for sale at their original rather than their units for cut-rate prices through an extended benefit scheme designed to accelerate the sale of council units.
The scope of the market does not exist for large-scale apartment dwellings for low- income earners since no one wants to carry the holding costs of such development.
There are a variety of factors that concern the restructuring of DCC, three factors will be dealt with. Firstly, instead of being able to add greater value downstream in the value chain, Durban creates lower value added items. Secondly, there is under- representation in the worlds fastest growing sectors. Durban does not have a presence in a number of areas where the world is currently growing very quickly, such as in computers, micro electronics, heath care and so on.
Thirdly, the base which Durban has developed, was developed under he broad umbrella of import substitution/protection, resulting in diversification and the development of many different industries, none of which are sufficiently strong to be able to dominate or compete very effectively on the global stage.
Attempts at municipal restructuring in South Africa have been fraught with problems and may have argued that within the context of the Interim Constitution there is a danger that local government could loose some of its powers. At a general level, a distracted central government; increased power for the provinces, an effective framework for local transformation and self interested bickering between local actors is delayed transition and creating animoties, with serious implications for the future of strong local government (Christianson 1994:27).
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One of the principal reasons why local government restructuring lagged behind in the institutional transformation underway in this country was the relatively distracted of central government which viewed transformation of the first and second tiers as the necessary starting point for fashioning a new non racial and democratic order.
The early days of the new government's housing policy promised to fill this gap. In its first tranche of funds released, by the end of June 1994, the PHB approved 46 housing projects for the creation of22 835 houses involving R173, 3 million in subsidy payments.
This represented a 62 percent success rate among applicants. Of these, 17 405 were in Durban (76 percent), 2,239 were in Pietermaritzburg (10 percent) and 3,181 (14 percent) were in pre dominantly urban areas. However, the bulk of the subsidies were to be paid out of future budgets, and only 24 percent would come from the 1994/5 budget.
This pace soon slowed down, and by the end of the first trance of payments two years later in 1996, a total of 143 projects for a total of 54,052 subsidies worth R647, 247.713 million had been allocated. A further R54,700,000 for 12 projects had been approved for consolidation subsidies over the same period.
Under the pre-interim arrangements, the executives of each substructure met each week but other than that there was little co-ordination in the system. As a result, the DCC area and the townships remained two separate worlds, especially since the pre-interim arrangements were never intended to last as long as they did. Despite these sustained difficulties, Corbett attests to the surprising fact that government was still working: "The system is functioning, people attend committee meetings, officials do their work, they are attempting to modify their administrative decisions to accommodate the metrol substructure system.
In concluding, it was precisely throughout the pre-interim period that even as institutional relationships were in their infancy, and as councillors appointed from the non-statutory component were learning on the job, communities were demanding participation and consensus building exercise along with rapid service and infrastructure delivery. One
major structure that held the potential to help un-block development in the DMA was the Durban Functional Region Development Forum (DFR-DF).