Debt and municipalities go hand in hand under ANC rule

The decision of the Democratic Alliance-led Tshwane metro to approach courts to seek relief about the failure of the ANC-led Madibeng local municipality to pay its dues to the metro is a matter worth noting.

The dependence of the ANC municipality on its DA-led counterpart was initially seen as cooperative governance in practice. This lasted until the smaller neighbour began to renege on a payment undertaking to Tshwane for its bulk water supply debt, amounting to R258 million.

The metro on Tuesday obtained an order from the High Court in Pretoria to attach Madibeng’s bank account to recoup the debt.

You can always guess that where the ANC is in charge, the administration wouldn’t be in order. You would expect municipal debt to accumulate, service delivery to fall behind and for the potholes to multiply.

There are more Madibengs out there waiting to happen – we have seen many others in the past.

Many municipalities in the Free State owe Eskom billions of rands. This included Maluti-a-Phofung, which went on for many years without servicing its debt to the power utility. The situation continued until Eskom decided to switch off the power supply.

ALSO READ: ‘Hold municipal managers to account’ after decline in audit outcomes for Gauteng municipalities

The payment or nonpayment of debt by a municipality depends on the competence of leadership running the municipality. In most cases, the senior management are hired without the competence to do the job.

For them, instead of servicing the debt, an existing debt provides an opportunity to accumulate more debt, until it is too much to pay back. It’s only when action is taken to recoup the debt, as Tshwane had done against Madibeng, that municipal officials and politicians start to wake up and think about the commitments they made to pay. By which time it’s too late to contain the debt.

It goes without saying that any municipality should have sufficient budget for bulk water supply because such a service is central and vital to the existence of the municipality in the first place. The fact that Madibeng owes R258 million indicates that Tshwane has been carrying Madibeng for a long time.

For a number of years, the municipality in Brits had been run by acting municipal managers. As late as last week, there was still an argument about hiring a permanent municipal manager for Madibeng, which is notorious for political infighting and lack of service delivery.

We still have to see the results of the promise made by President Cyril Ramaphosa during last year’s local government elections when he undertook to ensure that only qualified municipal managers and mayors would be appointed.

The president would have to be held to account for the way that the ANC-led municipalities are run. He needs to be reminded that voters’ patience is running thin. They heard the ANC’s many apologies about their electoral mistakes of the past.

Once the ANC loses power, it must prepare itself for a long haul away from the power steering wheel.

After more than 20 years running the country, the ruling party needs to rethink about how it should exercise that power and seriously consider coalition arrangements – where other political parties also have a say in the running of the country.