Last week, our auditor-general told us that of the 257 municipalities in the country, 215 are mismanaged and millions of rand in them go missing. When these unaccounted-for funds from these dysfunctional municipalities are put together, the figures go up to billions of rand that our communities are not receiving in public services.
This happens in a country where over 10m young people are without jobs, education and training – and this youth population also comes from families who survive below the poverty line.
Municipalities are crucial institutions tasked with managing the services we use in our day-to-day livelihoods. These range from water, electricity, roads and town maintenance to sanitation. Beyond this, they are also central in the attraction of key investments in the towns and cities we stay and work in.
The economic injections that come through tourism, major sports events and industries are all dependent on how public services are rolled out by the municipality.
No company will open factories and employ thousands of young people in a town that has damaged roads and a collapsed railway system. No major international rugby tournament will be played in a town that doesn’t have a modern public transport network, world-class hospitality services and a crime prevention system.
In other words, the proper running of our municipal institutions is interconnected with the quality of daily life and in the state of the economy. Thus, damning reports of this nature from the auditor-general should not be ignored and they should concern all of us to act, especially young people as the most affected.
But here’s another issue.
The public strongly believes that municipalities are collapsing because they are currently being led by greedy politicians and managers who didn’t go to school. Because they didn’t go to school, they therefore don’t know their jobs and they probably sign documents they cannot read.
We can see that they use consultants to perform functions they’re supposed to do and we should try to get rid of them as soon as possible.
The truth is, municipalities are not managed by clueless people. The personalities behind municipalities are highly intelligent people who know perfectly well how to manipulate systems. They know how to recruit people they can control and they also know how to position their power to influence how the municipal administration performs certain functions and ignore the others. They know all this very well.
They go to school. They go to training inductions and workshops. They have years of service in local government. But still, they decide to twist institutions around for their own benefit. In fact, they don’t want to move to any other different institution or sphere of government because they understand the new limitations they’ll be exposed to that they don’t have to deal with in a municipality.
The wastage of public funds and the ruthless theft is therefore deliberate and it is institutionally designed by the well-educated political elite for its own benefit.
Our laws don’t make this any much better. The auditor-general issues reports and catches our attention for a week but she cannot prosecute afterwards. Our law enforcement agencies and prosecuting authorities are still unable to dislocate themselves from political handling. Key political figures are still not in jail despite all the evidence in front of us.
In essence, outside the regular vote, we are not empowered as a nation by any other instrument to punish the people who put our precious democracy onto its knees.
The month of June then should be a point of reflection and a time for the youth to organise for a decisive action about the future they are going to inherit. There’s nothing to celebrate. Actually, all the festivals, tournaments, rallies and concerts organised in the name of Youth Month are a waste of time and a deflection from the core issues.
The time now is for the youth to get angry, to organise, to agitate, to conscientise and to lead yet another liberation struggle to attain economic freedom.
• Dr Mzileni is research associate in the faculty of humanities at Nelson Mandela University
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