Rather than scrapping provinces, South Africa should adopt a ”fully fledged federal system”, acting Democratic Alliance (DA) leader James Selfe said on Friday.
In a weekly newsletter published on the DA’s SA Today website, he said a resurgence of regional identity was one notable feature of a globalising world.
Selfe was reacting to a recently released African National Congress (ANC) discussion document on legislature and governance, in which the party examines the future role of provinces.
According to media reports, the document provides three options for discussion at the ruling party’s national congress in December this year: retain the current system, remove the provincial system altogether or reduce the number of provinces.
Selfe said he suspected the preferred option was the nine provinces be scrapped and their responsibilities taken over by central government.
”The argument is a beguilingly simple one: provincial legislatures are expensive and inefficient, and the social services they offer could be better provided — you guessed it — by Pretoria.”
However, by arguing that the provinces should be abolished because they were not providing the service the public expected of them was to look at the issue the wrong way round.
”Conceptually, it is not the provinces that are at fault; it is the way the ANC is governing them that is the problem. Put crisply: the rot is in the party, not the provinces …,” he said.
All nine of South Africa’s provinces were controlled by the ANC, and in all nine there was cronyism in appointments to public office, fuelling corruption and incompetence.
Selfe said a vital point often overlooked by critics of provinces was that, at present, office bearers were responsible to elected legislatures.
”By removing these assemblies, we lessen public oversight of those charged with service delivery.”
It had also been pointed out by analysts that whether or not South Africa retained its provinces, the country was too big to run from the national capital, and regional administrations would remain necessary.
Provinces, as envisaged in the Constitution, had responsibility in core regional competencies — tourism, transport, trade, health, agriculture and housing — as well as the vital areas of education and language policy.
”The challenge for the voters on the ground is to make the authorities accountable and to insist on the capacity to which, in a functioning democracy, we are entitled.
”It is precisely for these reasons that we in the DA … propose a fully fledged federal system for South Africa,” Selfe said.
Another pressing reason the ANC was keen to do away with provinces was because in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal the opposition stood a good chance of taking control at the next elections.
”International experience tells us that a resurgence of regional identity is one notable feature of a globalising world, and that the institutions over which localities have control are most responsive to people’s needs.
”In its itch to control, the ANC, meanwhile, marches in the opposite direction …,” he said. — Sapa