A troika of laws under government review seek to further centralise political power by strengthening the government’s hold over its lower tiers.
The Intergovernmental Relations Bill, amendments to the Public Service Act and the draft Municipal Employees Bill will enable the national government to set goals from the centre, monitor administration and exercise overall supervision of provincial government and local councillors.
President Thabo Mbeki is clearly seeking a stronger hand, with the apparent aim of streamlining public administration, reducing poverty and weeding out somnolent officials.
But, critics have expressed concern about what they see as the excessive concentration of power in the hands of few national ministers.
Intergovernmental Relations Bill
The Intergovernmental Relations Bill, tabled in Parliament in February, is the centrepiece of the government’s push for greater powers over provinces and local authorities.
The Bill aims to formalise the coordination of national, provincial and local service delivery, to lower the “cost of doing government”.
The Constitution mandates the enactment of a law to regulate intergovernmental cooperation, but the Bill gives national government much greater clout over errant municipalities.
The Bill replicates the president’s Coordinating Council at the provincial and local levels, giving the relevant leadership, from the president to the provincial premiers, power to consult vertically and horizontally across the spheres of government on the implementation of national policy, and to discuss service provision, particularly with municipalities. It also provides for a code of conduct for tackling intergovernmental disputes.
The Bill touches on the nerve of provincial and local government autonomy, which the Constitution guarantees.
Institute for Democracy in South Africa analyst Shameela Sedat said there were concerns that the Bill might result in provincial and local governments functioning as “administrative units rather than interdependent spheres of government”.
However, Graham Richards, the head of intergovernmental relations at the South African Local Government Association (Salga), strongly disagreed. “Far from wading into the constitutional rights of the municipalities, it will formalise intergovernmental structures so that [government officials] understand the mechanisms with which to relate to each other. It is not about some kind of power swing.”
The Bill has been approved by Parliament and the government aims to enact it by December.
Public Service Act
A joint task team of officials from the departments of public service and provincial and local government, the Treasury and Salga are reviewing the Public Service Act with an eye to giving national government a stronger hand over municipal managers.
The Act currently regulates the employment conditions of public servants, while local government employees are covered by a separate bargaining council and legislation. This allows municipal managers to award themselves exorbitant salaries, often to the detriment of service delivery.
Municipal managers earn an average of about R650 000 a year, even though some only have matric, Parliament heard recently.
Richards said that aligning the pay structure of local, provincial and national governments would require amendments to the Act, because the plans to top-slice their salaries and place them under the national government means council officials are unlikely to welcome the legislative review.
In addition, a performance appraisal system is likely to implemented, further bolstering national government’s Big Brother role.
Draft Municipal Employees Bill
The Democratic Alliance leaked a draft of the Municipal Employees Bill last week, describing it as one component of a suite of new legislation to centralise power in the hands of a few Cabinet ministers. The government claimed the document “has no status whatsoever”.
The Bill largely replicates the current Municipal Systems Act, but introduces two controversial clauses tightening national government’s grip over the performance of the other two tiers of government.
The draft Bill gives the public service and local government ministers power to deploy government employees vertically and horizontally.
The DA’s Willem Doman complained: “Besides the issue of municipal autonomy, deployments will achieve the opposite of the department’s stated aim of building capacity.”
Competent staff would be hard to attract if they risk being transferred, Doman said, while there was a risk that weak councils would be strengthened at the expense of their stronger counterparts.
Richards said he was aware of “an interdepartmental discussion on how best to manage the transferability of skills based on the different employment structures of government tiers”.
He said policy changes to move government officials across the three tiers were required by the Strategic Framework for Water Services that provides for the transfer of water services from national to local government over the next 10 years.
“This means that between 4 000 to 6 000 public sector employees will be devolved to local government,” he said.