Chairperson, today we have heard the Minister giving a lengthy assessment of his portfolio. Today I am saying that we must be very clear on one thing, and that is when municipalities fail, government fails.
I am saying this because no government programme aimed at service delivery, social upliftment or economic development can ever work without a functioning, effective and responsive system of local government. Local government is where the rubber hits the road and if that rubber is worn down or of a poor grade, then the vehicle of delivery is going to swerve off the road.
The recently released National Development Plan perhaps best summarises the enormity of the challenges we face, and I quote:
South Africa's local government system has significant powers and responsibilities, however, the system has to meet very different needs in different parts of the country with different levels of capacity, ranging from metropolitan municipalities with substantial financial, administration and technical resources to rural municipalities that have limited scope to generate their own revenue and lack the capacity to carry out complex tasks.
And here is the most important part -
A coherent approach to local government cannot be a "one size fits all" approach.
The fact that local government is at the forefront of service delivery in our country, is also evident by the mushrooming of service delivery protests in municipalities, and I am glad that the Minister spent some time on that today.
The recent report to the committee by the Financial and Fiscal Commission very clearly sets out that, in fact, currently we are facing an average of two service delivery protests per week across the country.
President Zuma's recent statement in the NCOP that "service protests are not a threat to the stability of the country", displays a remarkable political naivety.
It is obvious, even to the casual observers, that in most instances in our country, these protests are precipitated by an abject failure of local municipalities to effectively deliver basic services. This is largely due to the collapse of many of these authorities under the weight of corruption, maladministration and cadre deployment.
In many instances, these local authorities have lost experienced municipal officials, either through political purges or retirement. This has left them bereft of qualified personnel. When this institutional failure is then coupled with a decade of broken promises, it develops into a toxic mix of frustration and anger, ultimately manifesting in service delivery protests.
Now, the key to resolving many of these issues lies in reforming and strengthening local government, and unless drastic steps are taken to reform local government and create stable and efficient municipal administrations, the incidence of these service delivery protests will increase.
It is also vital that the frustration and anger that many citizens feel, as a result of poor or nonexistent service delivery, is effectively addressed. It is fine to say people have access to services, but are they actually receiving them? So what do we do, because it is no use cursing the darkness without lighting a candle.
The response to date has been to rely on the much-vaunted turnaround strategy. The truth of the matter, when we look at the programme, is that we have been turned around so many times that we have actually begun to become a little dizzy. Some municipalities, in fact, have been turned around so many times that they have ended up facing the exact same direction they were when they started. The reality is that many of these turnaround strategies end up collecting dust on shelves somewhere in the municipal archives. They do not get implemented; they do not inform the Integrated Development Plan and they do not change behaviour.
In the next fortnight, the Auditor-General will be releasing his report on the audit results for local municipalities. The prospects for these results do not look good. The Auditor-General was quoted in the Witness of yesterday, saying:
Bad results are regarded as the norm and when people get disclaimer or qualified reports, little happens to them to show that this is unacceptable. This is the culture that we all need to be concerned about. We cannot argue against that; we say amen.
The DA is showing that where it governs, it is possible to achieve good audits and clean audits at local government level. I have no doubt that when the Auditor-General's report comes out, it will, again, demonstrate that where the DA governs, it runs far more comfortable and transparent administrations than any other party. [Interjections.]
Chairperson, we still have a massive problem with corruption and graft occurring in far too many municipalities. This scourge has started to affect even major metropolitan municipalities such as eThekwini. The Manase Report, which a colleague will expand on later, established that councillors have been doing business with the council for millions of rands and not declaring it.
I think, hon Minister, that they took your slogan, "Local government is everybody's business", to a far higher level than they should have. The rot went right to the top, where the Chief Whip of the council and a fellow executive committee member were both found guilty. Instead of strong and decisive action being taken against them, they were let off the hook. They retained their positions and got a slap on the wrist. This is not good enough. We should have removed them from their positions, and that would have sent the proper message.
However, it doesn't have to be like this. We need to take a look at how we can restructure local government. Minister, we really need to examine the current structure of the system. The two-tier system in district municipalities has had very mixed results. In many instances, there is confusion and uncertainty about the roles and functions of the districts and local councils. We have some districts performing the functions of local councils, and in others local councils perform the functions of the districts. In many instances, there is extremely poor or no communication between the two.
In more rural and peri-urban municipalities, the districts are stripping staff away from their smaller local councils because the salaries at district level are obviously far more lucrative. This has left many smaller municipalities with extremely low capacity.
The National Development Plan also identifies the problems with roles and functions between districts and local councils and urgently calls for the differentiation of these roles and functions. The DA believes that we have to adopt a more flexible approach. Where districts work and are required, we should look at retaining them. However, where they are not required, we should have the option of doing away with them and devolving the powers and functions to local councils that have the ability to do the job.
The second thing that we need to do is to get the right people into the right jobs, for the right reasons. It goes without saying that we need to attract and retain qualified personnel to the local sphere, particularly the smaller and more rural councils that need the capacity. However, we will never affect this fundamental change, which is so desperately needed at the local government level, if we continue to play musical chairs with rogue officials, which is what we are currently doing.
Far too often, we are experiencing a situation where corrupt, incompetent and unqualified municipal officials are moved from one municipality to the other. Like the proverbial jack-in-the-box, they often disappear from one municipality, only to pop up in another.