CHAPTER 5 RESULTS
5.8. The Challenge of Co-ordinating the State
5.8.1 The NGO Sector
There is consensus amongst the NGO sector that the South African state from national through to local government level appears to be uncoordinated within the environmental sector. According to the NGO sector there is little evidence to suggest that local government in general manages environmental issues within the provisions of NEMA or the National Water Act or will be willing in the future to manage waste issues in terms of the Waste Act.
One NGO suggested that the notion of co-operative governance is an overused term with very little substance to it. The general view from the NGO sector is that national government must provide technical expertise to local municipalities to support them to implement the new
115 Waste Act, create national awareness of the new policy and hold local government
accountable for grant funding expenditure. Two NGO‟s doubted if national government could undertake this role given that most of their policy making capacity on the Waste Act was currently being provided by consultants. The views on provincial government were more diverse, half of the NGO‟s felt that provincial government should play an enforcement role by ensuring that grant funding was being used for the purposes intended and that waste management activities were being undertaken in accordance with permitted conditions. One NGO representative felt that provincial government should be disbanded because it played no meaningful role in environmental issues or waste management specifically.
5.8.2 The MM Waste Management Services Sector
The consensus amongst senior management of the WMU and the LSU was that the co- ordinated state was not working effectively in the waste management sector since national government had taken too long to legislate the sector; failed to provide sufficient resources to enable municipalities to extend service delivery; and failed to provide support to enable waste minimisation services to be implemented. One senior manager indicated that “we have felt very alone in the waste sector all these years, nobody from the Department of Environmental Affairs has come in the past 12 years to see how they could support Msunduzi, we have felt like there was no part of national and provincial government that was responsible for waste, now they are all coming to tell us to implement the Waste Act”. All senior managers from the WMU and the LSU believe that national government must provide financial and technical support to implement the Waste Act and create conditions to promote recycling in certain material sectors especially plastic and glass.
5.8.3 The MM Political Sector
All political representatives agreed that the co-ordinated state had not materialised and the two tier system of local government had not worked well. One of the political representatives indicated that the notion of co-operative governance is designed to fail and provided the following explanation “how can national government pass a law that requires the lowest level of government, a municipality, to perform a function or duty and when they fail to do what they should be doing, what you gave them money to do, you do nothing, you look the other way and say we are co-operating and then you give them more money and somehow expect them to change, they must be punished for failing to deliver, penalised financially and
116 then you will see how quickly they will change!”. All the political representatives agreed that national government must provide financial support to enable service delivery and enforce compliance of national legislation. Surprisingly all political representatives questioned the role of provincial government concluding that it was a waste of time and money.
5.8.4 The MM Labour Sector
Both shop stewards believed that national and provincial government must intervene more regularly within the MM to fight corruption amongst senior management and provide funding to improve service delivery.
5.8.5 The Business Sector
The organised business sector indicated that the co-ordinated state did not exist in South Africa. One of the representatives cited the MM as an example where all levels from local through to national government are controlled by the same party yet they collectively fail to communicate and work with each other. Both representatives of the PCB believed that national governments role is to fund local government and increasingly to provide human resources to enable services to be delivered.
5.8.6 The Regulatory Authority Sector
Both regulatory authorities felt that co-ordination between national and provincial government was a difficult process. The DWA is a national government department and suffers from too much power being centralised whilst the DAEARD is a provincial government department which faces major challenges in decentralising its powers and functions. The regulatory authorities agreed that national government must direct the implementation of the Waste Act through regulations and funding. DAEARD is of the view that the commencement date of the Waste Act has been too ambitious as government at a national and provincial level are not ready to proceed with implementation. DAEARD were also of the view that provincial government was useful in the implementation and
enforcement process since they are able to practically monitor and support local government.
5.8.7 The Technical Expert Sector
All the technical experts agreed that the existing norms on co-operative governance were hindering co-ordination of the state and ironically creating unco-operative relationships
117 within the state as local government was refusing in most cases to comply with
environmental regulations created by other levels of government. One of the technical experts believes that national government has abdicated key national government responsibilities in terms of the Waste Act to provincial government because it lacks the capacity to deal with the issues. The majority of technical experts expect national government to develop regulations that will provide guidance to local government on
integrated waste management practices especially waste minimisation and waste treatment.
All the technical experts believe that provincial government should develop provincial strategies in order to support local government to carry out their obligations in terms of the Waste Act and to monitor and enforce regulatory compliance from local government and the private sector.
This section concludes the reporting on research objective one, the remainder of this chapter will report on the results of research objective two and three.