Chairperson and hon members, our country's Constitution charges local government with the responsibility of delivering specified sets of services to the people. The institutional context in which this task is being undertaken has proved to have some unintended ineptness, which restricts the ability of the system to meet our expectations.
The particular issues of concern which are the subject of the Local Government Laws Amendment Bill of 2007 are embedded in the core local government legislation such as the Municipal Demarcation Act, the Municipal Structures Act, the Municipal Systems Act and the Municipal Property Rates Act.
Shortcomings in the implementation of these laws have been identified and it is our considered view that there is an urgent need to take legislative steps in order to stabilise the system and to optimise its functional efficiency.
We came to this view after consultation with various stakeholders who generously shared with us insights that were gained in the crucible of practice. These stakeholders include national government departments and provincial departments responsible for local government affairs, as well as the SA Local Government Association.
In addition to enhancing local government's underlying systems and processes, we are also proposing to encourage utilisation of the ward committees as the primary institutional modality of rooting democracy amongst the people and for generating mass participation in matters of government.
The adoption of core local government legislation, as well as related legislation which falls under the functional domain of other departments, has rendered some existing legislation redundant. Such legislation will have to be repealed. At the same time, there is a need to ensure proper alignment between various pieces of legislation and therefore this is one of the objects of this legislation.
All these issues will exercise the collective mind of members of the Portfolio Committee on Provincial and Local Government who, in turn, will set the stage for us to meet again on the occasion of the Second Reading of the Bill. I wish to thank them in advance and to express a hope that we will interact on the Bill soon. Thank you, Chairperson. [Applause.]
Chairperson, the DA welcomes the Bill. These changes have been long overdue and we feel that it is still not comprehensive enough. The DA will support all measures to hold councillors and officials more accountable and make this sphere of government perform better.
The effort to change the Municipal Systems Act and to allow for clearer differences between officials and political activists, by forcing municipal officials to resign when they become official candidates for national and provincial elections, is welcomed.
Too many officials do political work during office hours or behave as political activists in their work situation. We further caution whether it is constitutional to force officials to resign or rather to be forced to leave. This is a matter that will have to be debated within the committee.
We welcome section 106(4)(a) of the Municipal Systems Act that provides that the Minister may request the MEC to investigate maladministration, fraud, corruption or any other serious malpractice that, in his or her opinion, has occurred or is occurring in a municipality in the province. The MEC must provide the Minister and the Minister of Finance with a report on the investigation, detailing the outcome of the investigation. We need more investigations and discipline. Thank you very much.
Chairperson, the ACDP welcomes the Local Government Laws Amendment Bill as tabled here today. Since 1994, many changes have come into effect as local government progressed through its different stages of development. New municipalities and metros were formed and new directives on how to manage these local authorities were put in place in order for them to fulfil their commitments. Governance in local government is intimately connected with the people we serve, thus it must not stagnate. There needs to be constant change to all legislation pertaining to local government management and the participating role that communities play to determine their own future. It is very important to have an active and a well-empowered ward committee system in every ward as a matter of urgency, thus we need a fresh look at new ward committees, their functioning and their empowerment of participating role- players.
The ACDP therefore supports this First Reading debate on the Local Government Laws Amendment Bill. [Applause.]
Chairperson, I would like to commend the Minister for the amendment. I think one has to go directly to the DA that is making a big noise here: The main reason this Bill is to be amended is to make sure that there is a specific section - clause 6 - that provides for compulsory establishment of ward committees by municipalities, whereas in those municipalities where the DA is in power such a process was not allowed. The same applies to the IFP in KwaZulu-Natal.
This Bill is intended to make provision for the out-of-pocket expenses of ward committee members. As you would know, during our last visit to the municipalities in 2003, this was an issue of concern.
The Bill is also intended to make sure that the duties and powers of ward committees, the inclusion of the deputy executive mayor, as well as the participation of municipal staff members in the national, provincial and municipal elections are all looked into.
The other reason is to make sure that all the apartheid laws whose legislative process the very DA was party to, are to be dealt with and to be changed, together with the by-laws that were undermining the developmental agenda of the ANC. Thank you, Chairperson. [Applause.]
Chair, I don't know what the previous speaker has listened to and where - I can't work it out. But I will stick to what I wanted to say.
I have said that in the existing legislation governing local authorities amendments are required other than what is currently contained in the Bill now before Parliament. There are many clauses in this Bill, however, which should be welcomed. Examples of such improvements are the curtailment of the term of office of municipal managers and the compulsory provision of municipal accounts to both landlords and tenants.
Unfortunately there are also disconcerting amendments. One of these is that municipal managers will in future have the sole right to decide on investments of the council. You can rest assured that entities seeking investments from municipalities will be wining and dining municipal managers. Therefore, the door could be opened for corruption. The provision which is made for members of ward committees to be reimbursed for out-of- pocket expenses equally leaves the door open for corruption and mismanagement as there is no definition in the Bill to clarify the meaning of out-of-pocket expenses.
The fact that the formation of ward committees will become compulsory is not as worrying as the fact that municipalities are once more saddled with unfunded mandates. This Bill does not provide for reimbursement to municipalities of the increased expenditure to be incurred by having to pay not only for the out-of-pocket expenses of thousands of ward committee members, but also for secretarial services. In the case of Cape Town, for instance, 105 ward committees must be formed and minutes of all their monthly meetings must be kept.
The capacity certainly does not exist within municipalities to carry the extra workload with the current staff. Additional staff will have to be appointed at great cost. The usage of IDP committees by municipalities would have been more to the point and would have served the interests of the community just as well as ward committees. Out-of-pocket expenses will have to be paid, as I said, to thousands and thousands of ward committee members in South Africa, and I am sure that the municipalities have not budgeted for this.
There are flaws in the Bill, but we will nevertheless support it. Thank you.
Chairperson, the Department of Provincial and Local Government took a step even before the committee did so. We welcome this exercise because it represents an important aspect of the work that we are doing in the field of governance, namely monitoring and evaluating legislation and the impact it has on what it was intended to do, and therefore identifying things that urgently require cleaning up - so to speak. This Bill seeks to do that and does it in an interesting way.
This Bill also represents an important political opportunity for us to reflect on what we must do to address current problems that relate to municipal governance and so on. So, the four Acts that are the subjects of the Bill are an important aspect. The Bill provides the community and the stakeholders that work in this area an opportunity to point out to us those areas that we must attend to, so that we can speed up and accelerate service delivery and ensure that the law does not itself become a hindrance to that provision.
Most importantly, the Bill is an exciting one because it says to us that in those areas where we have provided legislation such as the Municipal Finance Act, some of the aspects of the previous legislation that came before it must then be made to comply with it so that you have a better alignment of broad legislative issues with financial and intergovernmental financial flows, as the Bill suggests.
I am amazed at the remarks that are being made about corruption that relates to ward committees when in fact what we are doing is saying that there is a positive view about these issues. There's important work that is being done without anybody saying anything about the free contribution of people's time, their energy, and their own money. There is no acknowledgment of that contribution that is useful to deepening democracy in this country. All we are doing is going for isolated incidences of corruption that have not even taken place. This is how negative some people can be.
I would have thought that we would appreciate the opportunity for deepening democracy - and nobody ever said that it's going to be a cheap exercise. It's an absolutely important issue to recognise that in deepening democracy we are not going to have it free and it's not going to be available to us in any other cheaper way. It is important to acknowledge the contribution that people are making and, in fact, support them in establishing a deeper, more dynamic interaction between people.
This Bill also provides an opportunity for us to look at other legislation and the relationship between this one piece of legislation and other pieces, so that we have a more coherent system that does not conflict with other pieces of legislation. We therefore welcome this opportunity and those stakeholders that may have missed the bus during the introduction of this Bill in the Government Gazette. The committee is opening up that space. We have already invited submissions. So, members must tell their constituencies to come and contribute. [Time expired.]
I take your advice that I am under no obligation to respond. But I just want to thank all the hon members for their participation in this First Reading. I think that they gave us a good flavour of what to expect when the discussions take place in earnest in the portfolio committee itself.
I thought I should also respond quickly to what the hon member Swart was saying about the ward committees - the concern that this is going to be an unfunded mandate. I think it's important that we all take note of the fact that government has been consistent in ensuring a massive increase in the year-on-year equitable share allocation to local government. We have emphasised the need for local government to make sure that some of our important activities are indeed prioritised when allocations are made to individual programmes of municipalities.
Public participation, at least in the post-1994 dispensation in matters of government, is not an optional extra. It goes to the heart of our own conception of a democracy. If this is the basis on which we are going to approach our work, then we expect municipalities not to see these increases in the equitable share allocation as something that has nothing to do with generating and improving levels of public participation in matters of government. So, we would expect them to make use of this resource to ensure that ward committees are formed throughout the country. By the way, the establishment rate today stands at over 96%. We want to see them being established everywhere in the country, including in Cape Town. Thank you. [Applause.]
Debate concluded.