Chapter 5 Findings and Discussions
5.7 Service delivery
Both ward 15 and 16 respondents reported much about the lack of service delivery, lack of facilities, resources and unemployment. This challenge is perpetrated by planners that have an “invisible role” in the IDP preparation in Ndwedwe as they are never seen or engage the
87 community. Thus there is gap between planners and the beneficiaries. Most respondents from both wards had much stronger feeling that participation had not made a difference in their lives and it was meaningless, since councillors continue to make promises of eradicating poverty through creation of employment opportunities and service delivery with little success. However, none of the above promises are fulfilled and as such they could not be trusted. The lack of commitment and lack of awareness affect the functions of structures such as ward committees and forums to correctly engage in the preparation of integrated development planning process.
The above responses indicate that, indeed the opportunity for local voices and participation is weakened by Ndwedwe Local municipality’s incapability, to propose and to shape dialogue towards the adoption of final decisions that could lead to transformation, which is in line with democracy and policy implementation policy for major development acquired.
The study found that huge backlogs exist in service infrastructure which underpins these two wards as underdeveloped areas, requiring Ndwedwe local municipality’s expenditure far in excess of the revenue currently available within the local municipality. There are great spatial disparities between the town, villages and community ward centres. For example traditional centres or civic centres which have increased service provision and transport tend to be expensive for community members. Areas that constitute wards 15 and 16 are fragmented with discontinuous land use and settlement patterns which contribute negatively to participation in the preparation of Integrated Development Planning process.
The South African Constitution (1996) (Section 59 and 72), ensures that public facilitation provide access to public participation. Despite these rules and provisions, this study noted that community participation is limited, due to a number of reasons. First in practice committees and the Local Municipality do not necessarily put sufficient time aside for meaningful comment from local community participating in ward structures such as Civic organisations and Ward committees. Time for participation is limited to 2 hours and often times less than that because officials arrive late and leave late. Second, there are no stipulations that committees must invite public comment and hold hearings. To a large extent the decision to do so lies with the committee chairpersons and depends on their perceptions of whether the legislation or rule deems public participation necessary. Third, the way in which the Local Municipality deal with the submissions and how submissions actually feed
88 into the IDP committee’s activities on community needs also differ since there are no uniform rules on the treatment of submissions. There does not appear to be a systematic process in place whereby submissions are systematically reviewed, and valid or reasonable recommendations extracted and brought before the committee for its consideration. Finally, it is also difficult to make any comparative observations about public participation in Ndwedwe Local Municipality. There are no readily available statistics about the number of ward committees and submissions received by each Local Municipality’s committee since 1994.
However, it was widely observed that the vast majority of groups participating in ward committees and public hearings in Local Municipality’s committees are limited to better- resourced NGOs and private sector/business interests. These groups are well placed to interact with the complex corporate language, can afford to travel to the Local Municipality and have the intellectual capacity to research and present persuasive submissions. It follows that these groups have better access to decision-makers and are able to influence them in terms of corporate choices. Ndwedwe Local Municipality has not been able to achieve widespread participation from rural community and grassroots communities. However, the Mayor indicated that this is not the purpose of the local municipality. Channels are offered to provide opportunities for input into the IDP preparation process.
Finally, Ndwedwe’s outreach programme has not compensated for these weaknesses. In that regard, its success has been limited. Part of the reason for this is that the unit dealing with IDP has undergone continuous changes in staff since 1994 as explained by the Municipal Manager, Likewise Izimbizos are geared towards facilitating community participation with a focus on rural women and public education and has had limited success because of poor attendance by the community. However, some positive results can be reported from the local Radio Broadcasting Station aired to rural areas to inform people on public participation and this was confirmed by the IDP Manager and other key informants. Communication is in plain language and circulated around the Ndwedwe area. Hence, improved public dialogue is noted. As such, the accountability relationship between representatives and Local Municipality on the one hand, and local community on the other, has been far weaker than it should have been.
89 This study also found the main factor that impacts negatively on local community’s abilities to influence decision has been language. In practice, Local Municipality uses only English with few exceptions in official meetings. This the study found to further compound the marginalisation of many local communities from meaningful participation in Ndwedwe Local Municipality. The net effect of problems in the IDP committee system, as mechanism has been unequal influence on the part of citizens to impact on decisions.
The findings of the study revealed that preferential access was also facilitated by rules that limit participation in decision-making to stakeholders, which tends to exclude average citizens and less organised groupings. These unequal opportunities, then, meant that the poorer and less organised segments of society are prejudiced in terms of influencing decisions. Their lack of full and meaningful participation meant that decision outcomes have been less representative of and responsive to the interests of poorer segments of society. This has been most evident in this group’s inability to counter the demands from corporate and business organisations, resulting in their dominance.