Revert to smaller municipalities
Smaller municipalities competing for business and offering investors and residents competitive rates would stimulate economic growth in a way the unwieldy metro has shown it cannot deliver.
EDITOR – When the details of the 2019/ 2020 eThekwini budget are considered within the context of metro history and prevailing economic circumstances, it should be apparent that the tipping point has been reached.
In 2000, when the unicity model was proposed, its motivation was premised on the claim that the consolidation of more than ten local municipalities into a single metropolitan administration would reduce the duplication of services and prove cost effective. The history of eThekwini budgets since 2003 proves otherwise. The metro staff complement grew from 16 000 to in excess of 24 000, proving Parkinson’s law, that bureaucracy begets bureaucracy, is thriving in eThekwini. In tandem with that bureaucratic bloat, the size of the budget has increased by nearly 500 per cent. In 2003 it totalled R9 75 billion. By 2008 it had grown 24 per cent to R23,4 billion. Now it stands at R50,6 billion.
Yet service delivery has neither improved nor matched the costs involved in providing it. Indeed, at best it ranges from patchy to poor. But the most critical aspect of the eroding state of eThekwini metro is its rates base. It has never grown in proportion to the ever-increasing budgets thrust upon ratepayers, languishing at never more than a 1,5 per cent growth rate. Thus, a situation has arisen where 19 per cent of eThekwini subsidises 81 per cent. Yet, in cavalier fashion, the so-called mayor boasts of the extent to which free services are extended to non-payers.
Although there is no drought and the dam levels are satisfactory, water tariffs for those who actually pay, are to increase by 15 per cent. What is not disclosed, it that 40 per cent of water bought by eThekwini is either stolen or lost through leaks, a situation that has been on-going since 2001. The only action that can salvage Durban from the tipping point is to dis-establish the metro and, piecemeal, re-establish municipalities like Pinetown, Umhlanga and Amanzimtoti. The metro is no longer affordable or sustainable. From an economic point of view, less is more.
Smaller municipalities competing for business and offering investors and residents competitive rates would stimulate economic growth in a way the unwieldy metro has shown it cannot deliver. Local government has become bloated and dysfunctional because it is seen as a convenient cash cow for the politically connected. As such, it has proved beneficial only to them and their comrades. By reverting to smaller, sustainable municipalities, as the Freedom Front Plus advocates, the concomitant of improved governance would be improved service delivery.
DR DUNCAN DU BOIS
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