democracy
John Seiler
A SECOND LOOK
Putting district councils rather than local councils at the pivot of local development reflects a planner’s fantasy: a predictable, uniform, when necessary controllable, and ultimately lifeless process in which basic change takes place quickly and without the awkwardness of competition among disparate economic, social and cultural interests.
Yet this is what the Municipal Demarcation Board has recommended to the Minister for Provincial and Local Government, Sydney Mufamadi, on the basis of questionable assumptions and inadequate analysis. It has diluted the radical potential for effective service delivery and the building of local political democracy implicit in its adoption of some 240 “wall-to-wall” local councils into which it has divided much of the country, including rural areas of white farms and former homelands as well as major cities like Pietermaritzburg.
Excluded only are parks, reserves, sparsely populated areas – like a swatch of the Great Karoo – and the six mega- cities.
Whether intentionally or instinctively, the board has jeopardised the promise of its own creative offspring, arguing that the 46 district councils would be better placed than 240 local councils to provide equitable service delivery and to focus development.
In terms of Section 85 of the Municipal Structures Act, the minister is expected by early April to issue a policy statement on the allocation of functions and powers between the administrations of category C, the district councils, and category B, the local councils. Staff of the national Department of Provincial and Local Government is completing its recommendations for the minister, who, while influenced by the board’s analysis, need not follow it. Under that same provision, the nine provincial local government MECs can make modifications to allocations within specific districts.
The board has already made its province- by-province recommendations to the MECs, based on an assessment of the administrative and financial capacities of all 843 transitional district and local councils carried out in January.
Adjustments are being evaluated by provincial staffs, so that MECs’ decisions will probably be promulgated within days of the minister’s statement, with the MECs free to ignore board recommendations, but with little, if any, public consultation with affected councils.
These next steps in the intricate demarcation process are essentially closed to public attention and rely mostly on analysis and recommendations from the Municipal Demarcation Board. That analysis and the assumptions governing the board’s commitment to district council administration are both flawed.
The basic shortcoming of the capacity assessment is its insistence on quantifiable categories. Far less a problem for the financial component, in the administrative categories it becomes glaringly superficial. For instance, length of service in senior posts becomes in itself a virtue – ignoring the admittedly awkward evaluation of local government service under the apartheid regime or effectiveness in management of service delivery in transitional councils since 1995.
To cap this exercise in reductionist assessment, scores are given in various categories and transitional councils are graded numerically and ranked as either “good,” “adequate” or “inadequate”.
The board’s analysis of transitional council capacity was discussed by its chair, Michael Sutcliffe, on February 15, with the parliamentary portfolio committee on local government. (This discussion was reported on the Parliamentary Monitoring Group’s website, but it has yet to appear on the board’s own website.)
Without identification of specific councils, Sutcliffe shared the analysis’s general conclusions. While 482 transitional local councils were rated as inadequate, only 19 proposed category B municipalities were so rated. But this would not present a practical problem, Sutcliffe told the committee, because no proposed district council (into which these failing local councils would fit) had been given an inadequate rating.
A more pessimistic appraisal had been offered by Sutcliffe the previous day to an Electoral Institute of Southern Africa workshop on local government. He told the workshop that one-fourth of all the new 46 district councils lacked sufficient capacity. He suggested some flexibility by the board in recommendations involving weak district councils containing one or more strong local councils or combinations of strong/strong and weak/weak category C/ category Bs.
In the board’s January 26 draft document, Functions and Powers for Municipalities (which does appear on the board’s website), the board laid out its assumptions for category C centrality. Not only would it include a wide range of development functions, but also “more efficient service delivery” and “building capacity of local [category B] councils”.
To carry out this expanded mandate, district councils would need to promote “the equitable distribution of resources between the local [category B] municipalities”, and further, resources would need to be transferred from category B councils to district councils.
But what of the “inadequate” one-quarter of the prospective district councils? Should those that will cohabit with adequate or strong local councils be granted by ministerial policy the power to drain “resources” (people, money, facilities) away from the local councils?
The board might argue that its recommendations to the minister and (especially) the MECs take this concern into account, but its insistence that district councils must be the lynchpins of local government implies that over time a policy based on district councils will emphasise strengthening the weaker ones at the expense of their constituent local councils.
Admittedly, representatives of these local councils will make up 60% of each district council; but their efforts to reflect local interests would be constrained by ministerial policy and MEC authority (granted under Section 86 of the Act).
The board’s effective weakening of category B municipalities ignores the productive possibilities inherent in the expression of cultural and class differences and the prospect over time for increasing degrees of productive compromise, weakens the possibilities for non-party candidacies in the upcoming election, and increases the distance (in spirit and space) of effective local government from the citizens it is meant to serve and represent.
The minister and the MECs would be far better advised to adopt a more realistic and (at the same time) more demanding policy. First, make district and local councils the dual pivots of local service delivery and whatever development can be afforded. Then, let them sort out the allocation of powers and functions within their individual districts, within the framework of national policies, with the provincial MEC authorised by the Municipal Structures Act to monitor this district-level process and with the power to intervene if things fall apart.
While the district transformation committees soon to be established by MECs in terms of Section 14 of the Municipal Structures Act would provide an appropriate mechanism for this localised process of mutual accommodation, there will inevitably be more conflict than under the imposed allocation recommended by the Municipal Demarcation Board.
But this conflict is essential to genuine local democracy and development. It could be mediated by the committee participation of district-resident civil society representatives whose organisations have a profound stake (but, so far, negligible roles) in the continuing transformation of local government, politics and community life.
Dr John Seiler is a United States-educated political scientist whose book, Transforming Mangope’s Bophuthatswana, can be accessed without charge on the Daily Mail & Guardian website at www.mg.co.za/mg/projects/bop/ index.html