File photo of the Ugu District Municipality building. (Photo by Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has sounded the alarm over the weakening of accountability that will could follow a slew of proposed amendments to local government legislation.
The Local Government: General Laws Amendment Bill has introduced more than 25 amendments affecting the Municipal Systems Act, the Municipal Structures Act and the Municipal Property Rates Act.
Key changes include lengthening the period that a municipal manager can remain in an acting position, and allowing municipal managers appointed irregularly to remain in office for up to three months.
“The eligibility criteria for a municipal manager is very clear and is governed by law. The amendments put forward would effectively allow a municipal manager appointed irregularly to remain in office for nearly 90 days, which is equivalent to a full financial quarter in the municipal calendar,” Outa’s Community Action Network project manager, Jonathan Erasmus said.
“This move to allow what is essentially an illegal appointment to remain intact, has massive trust and fiscal consequences for a municipality. If a municipal manager is appointed without complying to the necessary requirements, the municipality’s head of human resources department, the mayor and other councillors involved in the process must be held personally liable for costs incurred.”
Erasmus said a further amendment that would allow acting municipal managers to remain in office for six months, with an additional six months allowed thereafter, is equally troubling when the previous threshold was three months.
“The root cause of extended acting municipal manager roles is cadre deployment and political interference. Like any successful entity, there needs to be stability in leadership. Acting municipal managers cannot act as decisively as fully appointed municipal managers and, in practical terms, are likely more susceptible to political pressure due to their lack of authority within the organisation,” he said.
The department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs opened the bill for public comment until 31 August. Both Outa and the FW de Klerk Foundation have made submissions.
The FW de Klerk Foundation warned: “It is important to keep in mind at all times that service delivery is the core function of local government. Municipalities are tasked with striving to meet the basic needs of their community, promoting economic development and ensuring a safe and healthy environment and so on.
“Thus, the Bill’s proposal to extend the time frame for irregular appointments to be rectified must be considered in light of this: would it help service delivery, or would it hamper it?”
Outa’s executive manager for local government, Julius Kleynhans, said that the sweeping amendments also made some reasonable changes, and that the Bill should have been used to strengthen accountability.
“This is a missed opportunity. Every effort should have been made to raise the bar of excellence – not lower the threshold to accept incompetence. These bills are likely being written by legislators with self-interest and political expediency in mind, not the people,” he said.