Chairperson, hon Deputy Minister, there is something we are actually not considering, and that is political interference and instability owing to infighting in councils, as well as the lack of political leadership where issues of concern were raised by the Auditor- General, AG, in the previous financial year have contributed to the dire states of municipalities. Failures by municipalities have become so bad that South Africa was forced to give the AG more authorities to take steps against officials who are to be found guilty of irregularities even though the Municipal Financial Management Act, MFMA, allows councils to take similar actions.
Deputy Minister, considering that the AG found "political infighting at council levels and interference in the administration weakened oversight and did not enable the effecting of consequences and if
the municipalities' leaders are unethical it will filter through to the lower levels of municipalities".
Considering that the AG can compile investigative reports on request would your department be willing to request the AG to fully investigate the impact of political infighting and interference in such municipalities?
The DEPUTY MINISTER OF CO-OPERATIVE GOVERNANCE AND TRADITIONAL
AFFAIRS: Hon Chairperson, I think in the first instance it is important to indicate that the conduct of political office bearers in local government is governed by the code of conduct of councillors. It is very important to ensure that this code of conduct is being adhered to, to the extent that public office bearers at the local level are held to account in line with the code of conduct. And I think that we haven't always done enough to always overseer that in fact local government implements the code of conduct and the guidelines that provides with holding to people to account.
Our responsibility ultimately, as both national and provincial governments, is to ensure that when such conduct is done in a manner that impacts negatively on local government that we take appropriate
action in terms of section 139 of the Constitution which would start with issuing directives to the council to ensure that they are able to remedy that, failure to do that would then include invoking section 139(1)(b) or section 139(1)(c). Thank you very much.