In the ‘Readers View’ section of the Business Times this week, a reader laments what the state of our municipalities conveys to potential foreign (and local) investors.
Can there be a greater disincentive to new inward investment than to read about established enterprises shutting up shop or relocating from one municipality to another in the hope of better service delivery and infrastructure to underpin their operations?
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While corruption and mismanagement of municipal resources has been identified as the key reason for the dysfunctional state of local municipalities, underpinning this are a few factors.
Firstly, cadre deployment, whether to further the transformational goals of the ruling party, or for pure patronage purposes has been identified as a key enabler for municipal dysfunctionality.
Indeed, and encouragingly the President himself has acknowledged this, commenting in an address in Limpopo just last week that “.. his party’s deployment of unsuitable people to run local authorities, which undermined service provision and brought once viable towns to the verge of collapse.”
Witness Lichtenberg, Standerton or Maluti-a-Phufong.
Secondly, the boundary crossing by councillors interfering with management of municipalities, involving themselves in procurement or human resource issue (promoting nepotism) to benefit themselves or their families is rampant.
Thirdly, the inability or unwillingness of provincial or national government to intervene to stem the tide of dysfunctionality in local government structure is startling.
Even when, often at the point of total collapse municipalities are placed under administration, the subtle and overt intimidation of the tasked officials makes their situation untenable, resulting in no meaningful change of fortunes.
The cumulative impact of all this is seen in the collapse of service delivery, crumbling or non-existent infrastructure and a general administrative vacuum.
Fixing local government requires a concerted and honest effort from the ruling party, accompanied by a searching introspection that will hopefully result in the greater populace, rather than the party faithful, being put first.
Vijay Naidoo writes in his personal capacity as CEO of the Port Shepstone Business Forum.
The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.
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