Our inter-governmental system is not yet fully geared to deliver on nationally set policy in a coherent and effective manner. The recently debated Inter-Governmental Relations Bill provides a giant leap forward in resolving some of the key problems. A strong national centre is important because it can define policy direction with the benefit of a macro perspective, especially in a context of intensifying processes of globalisation.
However, excellent national policies will dissipate in the absence of effective implementation on the ground where our people struggle to eke out sustainable livelihoods in a context of unemployment and deep poverty. This is where the local government sphere comes into play.
The developmental role of municipalities is to ensure the concrete delivery of appropriate goods and services in a manner that cements our people’s contract at a community level. By definition, municipalities focus on their juridical boundaries, which is a strength because it allows for tactile engagements with ordinary citizens and their organisations, but also a weakness, because it can make municipalities parochial. Many of our development strategies and programmes require a broad view to understand the complex interrelationships between economic, social, environmental and logistical factors at play at various geographic scales.
Provincial government is the interlocutor between the macro and micro by focusing on the middle factors in our national development effort. They fulfil a vital role in translating the national development agenda into provincial frameworks.
A key role of provinces is, therefore, to ensure national consistency in our development efforts, but, at the same time, to set the frameworks for localisation and integration. I raise this because I believe that the absence of an understanding of institutional linkages in the national development planning system can lead to false dichotomies between spheres of the government and areas of development.
Let us make this more concrete. If we look at economic growth and development — surely our most urgent priority — it is clear that national government sets the macro-economic framework and supply-side support mechanisms. Municipalities, through local economic development strategies, seek to activate support mechanisms for small and emerging businesses so that they can migrate from the second economy to the first.
However, in between these spheres, provinces must set sectoral growth strategies that align with the natural growth points that tend to spread across particular regions. But, if we are to ask whether provinces are currently being empowered financially to fulfil this vital interlocutor role, I believe the answer is: maybe not!
I qualify this by referring to the bruising process of the medium-term Budget adjustments we are going through. The formula for the equitable share has been revised. In essence, it boils down to a ratio of poverty to economic growth that is 3:1.
In other words, economic growth and social development become a lot less important in terms of the provincial government’s role. Instead, there seems to be an assumption that provincial governments must focus on agency functions pertaining to poverty alleviation such as health and education and for a short while longer the provision of social grants. If this becomes 90% plus of what the provincial government is foreseen to be suitable for, frankly we might have to talk about provincial administrations or agencies as opposed to provincial governments.
Let me not make a case through what may be regarded as lamentation, but rather demonstrate the dangers of this path by referring back to the implementation of the National Spatial Development Perspective (NSDP) that emanates from the Presidency in relation to our vital challenge of growing the economy. It says:”Economic growth is a prerequisite for the achievement of other policy objectives, key among which would be poverty alleviation.
”Government spending on fixed investment, beyond the constitutional obligation to provide basic services to all citizens (such as water, electricity, health and educational facilities), should, therefore, be focused on localities of economic growth and/or economic potential in order to attract private-sector investment, stimulate sustainable economic activities and/or create long-term employment opportunities.”
The point about these principles is that it will take tremendous political will and managerial steel to achieve programmatic and budgetary shifts in line with this spatial vision. Due to the inherently narrow geographical focus of municipalities, it is vital that the strategic trade-offs mentioned in the government’s 10-year review, is mediated at a provincial scale. The NSDP further intimates that provincial growth and development strategies will become muscular policy frameworks that can inform complex trade-offs rooted in a sound regional spatial understanding. But this role will require that provincial governments are allowed to fulfil their constitutional mandates to the full and be empowered to pursue key concurrent economic functions such as agriculture, industrial promotion, public transport, tourism, trade, regional development and planning and urban and rural development.
Yet, the message sent by budget allocations and the choices provinces have to make leave provinces no significant development role other than rendering basic services. This is a recipe for imploding the developmental state even before it has had a chance to mature. If we fail to evolve the specific role of each sphere of our unitary state all of the government will suffer.
Ebrahim Rasool is the Western Cape premier. This is an edited version of a speech he delivered at a special session of the National Council of Provinces in Empangeni last Friday