Steven Friedman
WORM’S EYE VIEW
Sometimes “fixing” a problem can make it much worse. Local government after the pending elections may be an example.
There is wide agreement that many municipal governments are not working well. Far from meeting the ambitious development goals set them by national government, local councils often battle to balance their books and provide adequate services. But there are strong differences on why this is so and what should be done about it.
For the government and African National Congress leadership, the problem is technical. Too many municipalities and councils make local areas less manageable – local governments lack the skills to recover costs, deliver services and help development.
Two “solutions” are meant to remedy this. The first, highlighted these past few months, is to amalgamate municipalities and councils. Bigger local governments have been demarcated, and “unicities” will be run by a single council rather than the several we have now.
This is meant to make local government’s task simpler by centralising decisions in a single place where they can be taken more easily. Executive mayors with significant power to run some cities are meant to have the same effect.
The second, which will begin to unfold soon, is to ensure that ANC candidates for key posts such as mayor are chosen nationally: there is talk of “deploying” national figures – including, perhaps, Cabinet ministers – to local government. This is meant to produce a better quality of local leaders. After the elections, then, we are meant to have local governments which are easier to manage and are headed politically – where the ANC wins – by competent leaders. That, we are promised, will allow local areas to be run effectively and affordably.
But the promise may be an illusion. The plan for strengthening local government is based on faulty diagnosis – and the cure is, therefore, unlikely to heal the disease.
Weak capacity is a problem for local government. Better management, and books which balance, are essential to its health. But underpinning the “cure” we are being offered is the idea that we need less local democracy if municipalities are to be effective. In reality, we need more.
Larger local governments united in a single council will be more remote from voters who will find it harder to gain access to representatives. In theory, this problem is being addressed by introducing “ward councils” to advise councillors on local needs. But they need not be elected, nor can they make decisions; they are, therefore, a poor substitute for councils closer to voters.
Mayors or councillors “deployed” from the centre are less likely to enjoy local support than those chosen by local actors.
Some evidence of current thinking was provided by Johannesburg chief executive Khetso Gordhan last week during a radio interview. The city’s executive mayor, he suggested, should do better since she or he would be accountable to the national ANC leadership that could remove poor performers.
Asked what role public support would play in these decisions, he declared that it would “be taken into account”.
So whether voters want a mayor is reduced from a democratic principle to just one among many factors that national politicians will take into account.
Why should that matter? Because many of local government’s problems stem not only – or mainly – from technical failings, but from weak democracy.
Financial constraints do stem partly from managerial weaknesses. But the failure of many citizens to pay for services may also be a part result of their lack of confidence in local government: surveys show that voters trust it less than any other government sphere.
Inadequate service delivery is also partly a result of democratic deficit: citizens’ needs and experiences are not being communicated to local officials in ways which force them to serve their public.
And local government’s development role depends on its ability to persuade local actors to work with it and each other: that requires strong links between councils, local citizens and interest groups.
Finally, local governments cannot tackle their problems unless nnthey introduce nnnchanges. So people who support change must be mobilised, those who oppose it persuaded or outflanked. This can nnbe achieved only if nnncouncils nnstrengthen nntheir links with – and understanding of – local people and groups. Centralised decisions may be easier to take – but harder to implement because they are imposed on people who may resist or ignore them.
Important as technical tasks are, they will prove fruitless unless they are undertaken by councils who are in touch with, and can respond to, citizens. That is precisely the task of elected councillors.
We do not need representatives skilled in municipal management: officials do much of the managing. Rather, we need councillors in touch with, and able to work with, local residents so that they can identify the needs to which officials must respond and ensure that local conflicts which prevent councils achieving their goals are sorted out democratically and productively.
We have often lacked them since 1995. The problem has not been that not enough councillors are skilled managers – it has been that most are not in touch with their voters.
In the major cities particularly, candidates were often chosen last time because they were owed a post by their parties, not because they had local support. In many cases, local activists were passed over for nomination in favour of people, often from outside an area, favoured by party leaders. The result was often to ensure local representatives with weak links to their constituencies.
Bigger local governments unified into one council will make it less likely that councillors are deeply rooted in their electorates. And “deploying” candidates from the national level, however clever they are, will ensure that the gap between councillors and citizens remains.
As parties’ choice of local candidates are made, much discussion will centre on the dealings between political factions. ANC choices will be examined to see how many candidates its alliance partners – including its informal ally, the South African National Civic Organisation – are allotted.
Official opposition choices may now be measured against whether candidates are drawn from the Democratic Party or New National Party.
That may obscure the real question – whether candidates are rooted in local politics and command a base among local voters.
If parties give local choices free reign and encourage the selection of candidates with strong local support, local government will be in far better shape after the elections.
But if, as now seems likely, the ANC in particular insists on ignoring local support, it may transfer some of its smartest people to local government – only to find that, because they lack a local base, the problems they are meant to address worsen or remain.