Yes, there are power struggles. Yes, there is corruption. And some councillors do not always understand their role as public representatives.
But the majority of Gauteng local councils are sustainable — and residents are happy with service delivery. So says minister for Gauteng development planning and local government Trevor Fowler.
The African National Congress has conducted a thorough assessment of its record of governance and service delivery in Gauteng local municipalities. Now it says the problem is not lack of delivery but that the party has not sufficiently trumpeted its achievements. Yet the ANC found it necessary, in at least three municipalities, to remove the mayors and speakers and replace them with other councillors to strengthen the functioning of municipalities.
Last week at the provincial legislature Fowler tabled a mid-term report on the state of municipalities in Gauteng.
”In Gauteng,” he said, ”we have provided 90% access to water, 80% access to sanitation and there have been massive changes in people’s living conditions. In the last two years the mood of people has shifted because they can see improvement in services. People think we can do more because we have not communicated enough about things we have done. Perhaps we are not blowing our trumpets sufficiently.”
The Gauteng council is currently owed R13-billion in arrears for rates and services, but Fowler said the main contributing factor was ”institutional problems inherited from the past”. He said in Gauteng there was sufficient revenue to enable municipalities to be self-sufficient.
But not everybody in the ANC is satisfied with the pace of delivery. An ANC branch leader in Ekurhuleni expressed concerns about the Ekurhuleni Metro. ”We have been in crisis mode ever since this metro came into existence,” he told the Mail & Guardian. ”We are concerned that with an R8-billion budget, only R1-billion is allocated for capital budget, the core of service delivery, while the rest goes towards paying salaries and the council maintaining itself. There needs to be an administrative shake-up.
”This metro has lost highly qualified and experienced people — there were no defined roles because it was struggling to set up an administrative structure. We have stabilised politically, but administratively we are in a shambles. The red lights are flashing and they do so at a wrong time.” (He was referring to the upcoming elections.)
Mayor Duma Nkosi said the merging of 11 towns into one administration was a difficult task that took two years to complete.
”Even the ANC did not have an idea of how big the challenge was.”