Cheryl Goodenough
A district municipality in KwaZulu-Natal has accused the national government of acting unconstitutionally by failing to pay revenue to district municipalities.
The Uthukela district municipality lodged an urgent application in the Pietermaritzburg High Court last Friday. The matter is set down to be heard on August 13. President Thabo Mbeki and Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel top the list of 67 respondents.
Authorities from the municipality say that if they receive no additional funding basic services can only be provided for another six weeks, and the municipality will be in financial ruin in three months.
Uthukela covers the Estcourt and Ladysmith areas and stretches to the Drakensberg in the west. More than 550 000 people live in the municipality, and services provided include bulk water supply, sanitation at schools and the servicing of boreholes.
Before the restructuring of local government the Uthukela municipality provided the services in its role as a regional council and received a share of the national revenue. However, in this year’s Division of Revenue Act no money was allocated to district municipalities. The Act sets out to provide for the equitable division of revenue raised nationally among national, provincial and local spheres of government.
Although the Uthukela municipality receives levies and profit, such as from the supply of water, this covers about half of its budget. The municipality estimates that it will be short of about R8-million during this financial year. It received R13-million in national revenue last year, R9-million in 1999 and R6-million in 1998.
Uthukela claims that the Constitution guarantees local government an equitable share of revenue.
Demarcation Board chairperson Michael Sutcliffe said the board will not oppose the action by Uthukela because “it would go against the board’s principles and government policy as contained in the White Paper on Local Government”.
He said that the board made proposals about local government finance to the national treasury in October 1999 but never received a response.
Sufcliffe said that the board’s concern is that “particularly rural African people are being serviced by a number of district councils and the decision made by treasury will really harm them”.
He said he was certain the Minister of Provincial and Local Government, Sydney Mufamadi, has taken up the matter and hopes a settlement is reached prior to the matter proceeding to court.