Gaye Davis
CHRIS Ngcobo’s past experience of local government elections was as a Soweto activist, organising people to boycott them. So it was an historic moment when he cast his vote in Diepkloof this week.
But the poll meant more to Ngcobo than making his mark on a ballot paper. As national manager of the Masakhane campaign, Ngcobo needs local government structures in place that not only function, but are seen as legitimate.
It’s been a tough year for Ngcobo, crossing the country at the head of a campaign aimed at turning around the culture of non-payment of rates and services he once helped foster.
He and his team have sown the Masakhane (”let us build together”) message and seen it take root, flourish briefly and then wither. It is a general trend bucked only in the Northern Cape, where rates of payment continue to improve.
It’s also a trend that, if not halted, will see some local authorities — especially those comprising small former white areas and large black townships — facing cash-flow crises as early as mid-1996, according to Andrew Boraine, deputy director-general of the Department of Constitutional Development.
A review of the campaign in September showed a key problem was that while the campaign succeeded in sparking grassroots awareness, line function departments and local authorities were left out of the loop, Boraine said.
Roused by Ngcobo’s roadshows, residents would set about starting to make payments — only to have their goodwill blunted on finding paypoints no longer operating, billing systems in chaos and officials disinterested.
Ngcobo is now gearing for a kind of Masakhane Mark II, a re-launch which will focus on gearing local authorities to power the campaign themselves and which will dovetail with a massive training programme for newly-elected councillors and council employees.
Another leg of the revitalised campaign will be mobilising community and civic organisations to support their local authorities and especially councillors, who will have the unenviable task of spelling out the bottom line to residents: no pay, no gain from the RDP.
Boraine now heads up a new team which will provide for close liaison between the Masakhane Campaign, local authorities, provincial governments and line function departments such as housing.
The training programme for newly elected councillors and council employees would aim at equipping them to meet their new responsibilities in terms of implementing Masakhane, Boraine said.
”Looking back at Masakhane over the past year we realised it can’t just be a moral or political call by people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President Mandela,” he said. ”There has to be a total strategy.”
While Ngcobo’s campaign will still run its roadshows, Boraine’s team will focus on the financial and technical aspects of breathing new life into shattered municipalities, with local authorities themselves being the dynamo.
More than R1,5-billion of RDP funds will be channelled to local authorities over the next three years in terms of the government’s Municipal Infrastructure Programme. About R850-million was allocated this year and a further R700-million was coming, Boraine said.
Handing funds over to municipalities reliant on inter- governmental grants to keep functioning would be like ”pouring money into a bottomless pit”, according to Ngcobo. Hence, the need for training.
Before receiving funds, local authorities would have to have business plans vetted by provincial legislatures and the RDP office. Funds may only be spent on providing basic services: water, sanitation, refuse removal, electricity and roads.
Former black local authorities will have to be reconstructed. ”We’ll be asking whether they have pay points, whether their billing system is in place. Their delivery system has to be jacked up.”
Boraine said he expected by December 15 to receive the first of what will be monthly reports detailing the financial status of every local authority in the country — their cash-flow situation, the amount of arrears outstanding, payment levels and tariffs levied.
”Until now we’ve had no accurate picture regarding payments. It’s been a disaster. Most figures available relate only to Gauteng and payment levels are bad.” But former townships in the old Transvaal, where boycotts began in 1983, would be the ”hardest nut to crack”, because of their size and the scale of the problem. Another area that would receive special attention was the Eastern Cape, where poverty levels were high.