CHAPTER THREE: TRACING THE DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT POLICIES IN POST-1994 SOUTH AFRICA
3.6 RURAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY FRAMEWORK
3.6.5 Local Government and Rural development
105 mandate of LG in relation to rural development in the post-1994 era has been clearly defined, and there exists a basket of pieces of legislation to support it.
106 The result was an easily identifiable urban city, predominantly White, well- developed and separated from African, underdeveloped township areas”.
The above indicates that the structure of local government designed by the apartheid regime did not accommodate rural areas which constituted a big chunk of the Bantustans. As such, the local government had no direct role in the development of rural areas under the leadership of chiefs. However, this scenario changed in the post-1994 era of the democratic dispensation. A reformed LG was mooted by the RDP base document and later the RDP White paper (1994) as the most ideal system of governance to democratise society and drive socio-economic development at grass-root level. The RDP proposed the re-demarcation of boundaries of the previous local government to ensure that informal settlements on the outskirts of towns and cities, and urban settlements displaced behind homeland boundaries are all incorporated into the new LG. The RDP put it unequivocally that rural development would be spearheaded by the LG through their delivery of services to all rural areas including those under traditional authority. The RDP also articulated the role that the LG, through rural district councils and local municipalities, would play in rural development in post-apartheid South Africa.
The vision of a reformed LG in the post-apartheid South Africa is enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (Act No. 108 of 1996). Chapter seven of the Constitution defines the duties and objectives of the LG as well as the categories of municipalities which must be established in the Republic of South Africa, and procedures and powers for each category (Act No. 108 of 1996, section 151 (1)). The three categories of municipalities were discussed earlier in this chapter (see Table 4) as a way of clarifying where rural areas are located. The Constitution established the three spheres of government that are “distinctive, interdependent and interrelated” (Act No. 108 of 1996, section 40). The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (Act No. 108 of 1996) stipulates areas of legislative capability to each of the three spheres of government. For example, schedule 4 and 5 of the Constitution delineates functional areas for each of the three spheres of government and specifies “the concurrent functions between national and provincial government” (SALGA, 2015:5).
Schedule 4, Part A of the Constitution identifies “Urban and Rural Development” as a functional area that is concurrent to the national and provincial governments respectively.
However, Part B of schedule 4 indicates that “Municipal Planning” falls under the competence of the local government. It is important to note that, while various functional areas of competence are outlined and allocated to the three spheres of government under schedules 4 and 5 of the Constitution, they are not clearly defined. According to SALGA (2015:5), the
107 question of what constitutes “municipal planning” and whether “municipal planning” is an esclusive function of local government or a concurrent functional area between the provincial and local government had to be clarified by the Constitutional Court in 2010”. The Constitutional Court confirmed that “municipal planning”is indeed an exclusive functional area of the local government (SALII, 2010).
Althogu there is no constitutional obligation on the part of the local sphere of government to respond to rural development, the local government plays a significant role of delivering services to rural communities and driving rural development. In this regard, the Constitution confirms the pivotal role of the LG in both driving the social and economic development, and promoting democracy at the local level. The LG was constitutionally established as an autonomous sphere of government that is administered by Municipal Councils that are locally elected and have executive powers and legislative authority to run their affairs. A series of Acts of Parliament were enacted to provide the necessary legislative framework for the LG to fulfil its constitutional mandate. The Municipal Structures Act (1998), the Municipal Systems Act (2000), the Municipal Demarcation Act (1998), and the Municipal Financial Management Bill (2003) are all important pieces of legislation designed to build a reformed LG in the post- apartheid South Africa. Each of these legislations focuses on specific aspects of the functioning of LG.
The Local Government: Municipal Structures Act (Act No. 117 of 1998) defines the different categories of municipalities. The Municipality Demarcation Act (Act No. 56 of 2003) provides the framework for setting up Demarcation Boards to determine municipal boundaries and realise the objective of integration so that weak municipalities can be supported by the well- resourced ones. The Municipal Structures Act delineates various structures that are necessary to build local government. The core objectives of the Act (Act No. 117 of 1998) are defined as:
“To provide for the establishment of municipalities in accordance with the requirements relating to categories and types of municipality; to establish criteria for determining the category of municipality to be established in an area; to define the types of municipality that may be established within each category; to provide for an appropriate division of functions and powers between categories of municipality; to regulate the internal systems, structures and office-bearers of municipalities; to provide for appropriate electoral systems; and to provide for matters in connection therewith”(Act No. 117 of 1998:2).
108 The Act also describes the various structures that should constitute the LG at municipality level and defines their powers. It stipulates how the various LG structures are regulated in order to function efficiently. It also reiterates the LG’s constitutional obligation to the people, which is:
“To ensure sustainable, effective and efficient municipal services, promote social and economic development, encourage a safe and healthy environment by working with communities in creating environments and human settlements in which all people can lead uplifted and dignified lives” (Act No. 117 of 1998:2).
In addition to driving the social and economic development of local communities, the Act explains that another role of the LG is to enhance democracy by promoting public participation in local municipalities. The importance of developed structures and institutions to achieve rural development has already been pointed out. The indication here then, is that Municipalities with weak and dysfunctional structures cannot provide services and successfully drive the agenda of social and economic development in rural areas. As a result, the Municipal Structures Amendment Act of 2000 acknowledges the limitations of local category B municipalities which are mostly rural and underdeveloped. Thus, infrastructure development, bulk supply and theprovision of services were re-located from the weak local municipalities to category C municipalities, which are districts, in order to remedy the situation. Davids (2001), Perret and Lhopitallier (2000) argue that districts are the de facto developmental and infrastructural operators and service providers in rural areas of South Africa. The implication of this is that districts are given power over local municipalities under their jurisdiction, and are responsible for building the capacity of local municipalities where necessary.
The Local Government Municipal Systems Act (Act No. 32of 2000) defines the processes and operational features of the LG. It defines the LG’s core objective as:
“To provide for the core principles, mechanisms and processes that are necessary to enable municipalities to move progressively towards the social and economic upliftment of local communities, and ensure universal access to essential services that are affordable to all; to define the legal nature of a municipality as including the local community within the municipal area, working in partnership with the municipality’s political and administrative structures; to provide for the manner in which municipal powers and functions are exercised and performed; to provide for community participation; to establish a simple and enabling framework for the core processes of planning, performance management, resource mobilisation and organisational change which underpin the notion of developmental local government; to provide a framework for local public administration and human resource development” (Act No. 32 of 2000:2).
109 The Act provides a broad framework for establishing the LG with clear systems and procedures that are responsive to the local needs. Most importantly, the Act made Integrated Development Planning the point of departure for municipalities, which means that the development planning, budgeting, allocation of resources and evaluation of performance is guided by the IDP processes. A key feature of IDP is that it must be community-driven, hence the imperative of public participation. For the rural areas, the IDP processes provide an opportunity for bringing rural development and local governance together. As Perret, Anseeuw and Mathebula (2005) observe, IDPs aim at harnessing and bringing national and provincial means and capacity to the local level. This implies that many municipalities, which include large tracts of rural and underdeveloped areas could benefit through IDPs.
The IDPs became the focus of the ISRDS and are supposed to be driven from the grass-roots level. Existing studies on the ISRDS reveal that the programme failed because it was designed with no specific budget for its implementation. This indicates that the IDPs failed to harness and bring the national and provincial means and capacity to poor rural municipalities. Instead the ISRDP relied on the budgets of line departments that had included the Municipal IDPs in their own operations (Phuhlisani Solutions, 2009:27). The observations by Mahlati (2011) state that, the ISRDS failed to impress because it relied on a governance system riddled with fragmentation and protection of turf that complicated the situation. Cousins (2003), also questions the feasibility of the ISRDS in the absence of strategic planning and sectoral prioritisation necessary to address the systemic and structural constraints that were already hindering rural development. Other critiques raised concerns about the execution capacity of the programme at the LG level (Cousins, 2003; Everatt and Zulu, 2001; Pieterse, 2001). The argument of poor execution capacity suggests that those districts with large tracts of rural and underdeveloped areas lacked structures and functional institutions to effectively drive the ISRDPs. This is contrary to what former President Mbeki (2001) pronounced at the launch of the ISRDS when he stated that, “[T]he Government is now in a position to implement a rural development programme for the integrated development of rural areas. This will bring together all government departments and all spheres of government, including traditional leaders”. The poor performance of the ISRDS indicates that the existence of a solid legislative framework has been of little impact as the LG in rural municipalities still struggle to establish functional structures and systems to enable it to fulfil its constitutional mandate. The issue of structures and systems is linked to the availability of resources and other factors such as the competency
110 of personnel to manage and coordinate programmes. These factors also compounded the challenges of the LG and weakened its capacity to effectively address the problems of rural poverty and under-development.
Other researchers, such as Gwanya (2013) point out that the ISRDP remained for too long at District Municipality level and failed to address local municipalities at the ward and village levels. This again indicates that District Municipalities with many rural local municipalities under their jurisdictions were too overwhelmed to render support and build the capacity of those weak local municipalities. The suggestion is that the IDPs of rural local municipalities are compromised since they depend on District Municipalities for guidance and technical support in this regard. Therefore, while the legislation framework on which the LG is built exists on paper, functional structures and systems that are supposed to enable the LG to deliver its constitutional mandate, remains a major challenge especially in rural municipalities.
According to the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI, 2020:1), the fiscal framework for local government which was designed in the post-1994 era was to ensure “that municipalities have the ability to raise significant amount of their own revenue”. It was assumed that municipalities could “raise about 73% of revenue through property rates and service charges”
(PARI, 2020:1). On the contrary, research shows that many municipalities are financially distressed and this inhibits their ability to deliver quality services to citizens. This suggests that if local government is to fulfil its mandate to spearhead developmet at the grass-roots level, the fiscal framework needs to be reviewed. Fincial distress at the local government level has a direct impact on rural development as it reduces the capacity of local government to implement rural development programmes effectively. Nonetheless, the ISRDS was prematurely aborted and replaced with the War on Poverty campaign at the ANC Policy Conference in 2007.