I’ve been a little puzzled by the flurry of activity by the ruling party in the local government sphere. We’ve had reports by Cogta that they are urgently instituting training programmes for municipal managers and executive mayors to enable them to better spend their budgets.
Then we have KZN Premier Dube-Ncube assembling the leadership of municipalities identified by the Auditor General’s office as failed or close to failing in Durban to be effectively raked over the coals, even though this was couched as a ‘support intervention’.
The question to be asked is whether the ruling party as local government in large swathes of the country was effectively collapsed through sheer nepotism, mismanagement, cadre deployment, rampant corruption or any combination of these? It then dawned on me that national and provincial elections are but a few months away, and general consensus is that the ruling party is in critical danger of ceding control of many provinces.
I must confess to cynical thoughts as to the ruling party’s motivation: are they really interested in fixing local government to try and reverse the essentially non-existent service delivery to citizens, or is it more the fear that the chaotic situation in local government is going to influence the voting patterns next year? After all, the closest interface between voters and government occurs at the local level, and the ruling party’s performance at this tier of government is nothing but shambolic.
The argument goes that if a party cannot effectively run local government, how can they remotely be trusted to run provinces, or God forbid, a National government. The problem confronting the ruling party is exacerbated by the fact that some of the worst performances at local government level is occurring at nearly all the major Metros, nearly all of whom are responsible for multi-billion rand budgets, like eThekwini and Johannesburg.
Of course let’s not forget about the projects being lined up for grand official openings across the length and breadth of the country by National Government Ministers, and perhaps the President, himself. This to project an image of infrastructure delivery, never mind that most, like our own Justice Park are well over budget, and planned delivery dates.
My conclusion is that the ruling party is likely to learn a very hard lesson in 2024, namely that the game of political expediency, mixed with indifferent consequence management, and distance from their constituency, is likely to produce a very bad ending for them.
Vijay Naidoo is the CEO of the Port Shepstone Business Forum. He writes in his personal capacity. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Like the South Coast Herald’s Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and Instagram
