Salga Limpopo geared for ‘One plan, one budget’

The hosting of the South African Local Government Association (Salga) Limpopo Provincial Members Assembly (PMA) in Bela-Bela was significant in view of the fact that Waterberg District Municipality has been chosen to be one of the three local authorities in the country that will be part of the ‘One plan, one budget’ district-based planning model pilot project of national government.
In his opening address at the PMA, Chairperson of Salga Limpopo, Pule Shayi said that the ‘One plan, one budget’ plan signals the end of humiliating planning failures perpetuated by an unrelenting tendency to work in silos. “We work in silos within and between local municipalities and districts and we work in silos between local government and government departments and we are not jellying very well in the manner in which we work with the very provincial departments that must support local government to do well in discharging its powers and functions as outlined in the Constitution,” Shayi said.
According to Shayi, people want to share, plan and work together across territorial, cultural and other divides. “It is clear that the days of being territorial about your municipality, your department, your parastatal, your political party, your constituency or the office you hold, are numbered,” he said and added that people want integrated planning and they want to work from one resource plan.
Resolutions of previous PMA
“As part of the Salga programme to mobilise integrated support we were tasked as the Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) collective, to engage in a structured engagement programme with key stakeholders, including a number of MECs, Shayi explained and said that the PEC engaged with political office bearers, senior managers in municipalities, government and state agencies, the Auditor-General, the National Council of Provinces and the Independent Electoral Commission, among others. The PEC also engaged government departments in discussions relating to matters which included the issue of water availability and its impact on continued water supply, township establishment, inward investment and new developments, availability of water for development, catalytic projects and economic growth. Critical stakeholders including Eskom, the Department of Water and Sanitation and Lepelle Northern Water were also consulted.
Engagement on debt with parastatals
“The issue of debts owed to parastatals is still a matter of ongoing concern and threats of switch-offs continue to hang as an albatross around the necks of concerned municipalities. I don’t know what deadlines or timelines we can put on this issue of debt renegotiation and honouring of settlement plans,” Shayi said.
Strategic engagement with DBSA
“Salga also has an inherent obligation to assist in the efforts to strengthen the capacity of our municipalities and the development we are all talking about is largely dependent on the capacities of our municipalities to drive such a development. Municipalities are, and should remain our strategic engines of development. All countries which have improved on their development trajectory have done so through local government,” Mathabatha said and added that this is because all development projects and initiatives, takes place at a local level.
Salga had several engagements with the Development Bank of South Africa and the Office of the Premier and Coghsta and the main objective of these engagements was to find ways in which Salga could improve project planning and implemention and enhance the culture of forward planning.
VBS Saga
“We take this opportunity also to express our appreciation to the leadership of our provincial government for the classy, balanced, professional and matured manner in which they dealt with and continue to deal with the complex and sensitive VBS saga, which frankly speaking, occupied most of our time during the year under review,” Shayi said.
MIG spending and municipal audit outcomes
Shayi thanked those municipalities that are effective in spending their municipal infrastructure grants (MIG), as well as those municipalities representing the province well at the municipal audit front.
Municipalities with unfunded budgets
“Municipalities that were identified as having unfunded budgets, let us be humble enough to appreciate the feedback and get down to work on redoing our budgets,” Shayi urged.
Municipalities under section 139(1) administration
To those municipalities that are still under s139 interventions, we sympathise with your heartily. It may be out of necessity, from a restoration point of view, that you are placed under administration but it must be stated clearly that, as a body of organised local government, it is not good news to hear that one of our member municipalities is under administration,” Shayi said in reference to Mogalakwena Municipality that was placed under administration last week. “As Salga, we are working closely with Cogta and Coghsta to streamline the support and interventions space through the development of the Intergovernmental Monitoring, Support and Interventions Bill. The finalisation of this bill will assist us to avoid all the process challenges that we are currently encountering,” Shayi added.
Welfare of ward committees
Shayi raised a concern regarding the welfare of ward committees. “It is not an easy issue because characteristically South Africa is an activist society, which embraces both representative and participatory democracy. In the light of that, South Africa has many organs of state at community level and those include many committees in various areas of health, safety and security, and so forth. This therefore means that we have to tread carefully in ensuring that we up the welfare support we provide to our dynamic and committed and critical ward committees. The ward delimitation process is upon us and we hope that it would be successful and painless this time around,” Shayi said.

Story and photo: BARRY VILJOEN
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