Dysfunctional ward committees are being blamed for the apparent breakdown in communication between local government and communities.
Last year saw protests take place in the Phumelela, Harrismith, Maluti-a-Phofung and Mathjabeng municipalites in the Free Sate, the Govan Mbeki Municipality in Mpumalanga, the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality in the Eastern Cape, as well as in Cape Town and Diepsloot in Gauteng.
The message was clear: communities’ voices are not being heard. “The health of the democratic system depends on work being done by ward committees,” President Thabo Mbeki told senior management from the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape provincial government late last year. He said it was important that ward committees were legitimate and acceptable to the people they represented.
Ward committees were established as the direct link between the community, councillors and, ultimately, the municipality. These committees are the main tools available to municipalities and communities to enhance public participation at local level. In order to ensure such participation, regular meetings are essential. Mbeki said that a rapid turnover of committee members was not in the interests of the desired strong relationship with communities.
Each municipality decides how many members sit on a ward committee, but there can be no more than 10 people on a committee. Communities are meant to have a say in the planning and spending of their ward’s or town’s budget through the committees, but where ward committees are dysfunctional or non-existent communities tend to be left out of these processes.
An example of a breakdown in communication between the municipality and the community is last year’s protests in Harrismith, where residents protested against the lack of sanitation. A toilet project had actually been budgeted for and was to be implemented in the town, but the community had not been informed of the project.
Mbeki said that there was also a need to improve communication between ward committees and metro councillors. He was told at an imbizo that the City of Cape Town did not take ward committees “seriously” and that interaction between the two was not sufficient.
Dylan Govender, skills development manager within the Msunduzi municipality, said last year that one of the challenges facing the municipality was that not all wards had active committees. He said this made it difficult to engage the community. Legislation gives metro or local councils the option of delegating duties and powers to ward committees.
In doing this, municipalities may even “make administrative arrangements to enable ward committees to perform their functions and exercise their powers effectively”. A well-functioning ward committee, critics have pointed out, will ensure that the community takes a direct part in government and in ensuring service delivery.
Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo said at a ward committee meeting last year that community engagement through ward committees is critical for effective local government. “Such an engagement enables elected public representatives to remain sensitised to the concerns of communities and ensures that the general public remain aware of how government works,” said Masondo.