Over the past few days millions of South Africans have been voting in the local government elections to decide who must govern their municipalities. Local government is without doubt the most important sphere of government for it is the coalface of service delivery and the first line of engagement with government for communities.
Having worked in both national and local government, I know with certainty that the real work of government is in municipalities. There, we engage with the everyday needs of the people, not only during imbizos, as we often did at national government, where our main focus was on policy development, but on a daily basis.
I work in political office in a metropolitan municipality and have seen first-hand how communities depend deeply on their municipal officials. Whereas at national government our meetings were with corporations and institutions, most of our meetings at local government are with ordinary people who come into the executive mayor’s office to request assistance with the most basic of services.
Families come in to ask for help to bury their loved ones; the elderly walk in to ask for assistance with changing their Sassa card PIN numbers because a child or grandchild is misusing the money; mothers come in to ask for help placing their children into drug rehabilitation centres. Local government is where people truly engage with the state.
It is thus deeply concerning to me that this sphere of government is also the most neglected. We have all read the latest report by the auditor-general on the state of municipalities in our country. Only 27 out of 257 municipalities received a clean audit in the 2019/2020 financial year.
The AG also reported a staggering R26bn in irregular expenditure. To put it into context, this is the amount the government has budgeted for home affairs and innovation and science and technology in the year 2021 – combined. The dire state of local government demands urgent attention if SA is serious about building a developmental state.
But the problems with municipalities are also our doing. Citizens are the primary stakeholders in government – something few seem to understand. There is a mentality that democracy begins and ends with voting. This breeds a lack of participation in other platforms that are intended to strengthen democracy. People disengage from participating in processes like the determination of municipal budgets, which is without doubt the most important tool that communities have to effect change in their geographies.
Every municipality in SA is required by law to produce an integrated development plan (IDP), an approach to planning that involves the entire municipality and its citizens in finding the best solutions to achieve good long-term development.
The IDP sets a framework for how land should be used, what infrastructure and services are needed and how the environment should be protected. And its development is dependent on the contributions of residents within the municipality. Yet very few people attend public meetings to develop the IDP.
We need to understand that our country is a participatory democracy. This goes beyond casting a vote every five years. It is a constitutional obligation for the government to involve us in policy development and in the making of laws. This is why public participation is required in things like determining whether or not to amend section 25 of the constitution to make allowance for the expropriation of land without compensation.
But we rarely participate, then turn around and blame the government for taking decisions that aren’t aligned with our collective aspirations. It’s time that we understood our power and reclaimed it or things will never change.
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