Hon Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson, hon Minister and Deputy Minister and hon members, we wish to begin by acknowledging the intense work of the Independent Electoral Commission, the IEC, political parties and municipal officials who conducted the very successful 2011 local government elections from which we have just emerged.
In the wake of recent uprisings around the world, this is something to be celebrated. The aggressive media, communication and marketing strategies and resultant voter turnout, as well as the competitive nature of the electoral campaigns, indeed highlight that we are beginning to entrench a vibrant local democracy.
As many new councillors have taken office, we must be mindful that the burden on them and on local government is immense. Indeed, local government has been given a very broad and challenging set of responsibilities. As the national and provincial governments begin to engage with the new councils, they must be mindful that effective performance by local government against their mandate requires a much more coherent and co-ordinated set of support initiatives from the other two spheres of government in terms of policy and resources than has been the case to date. Parliament and provincial legislatures, crucially, must play their part in ensuring that this support is forthcoming at national level and in the provinces.
As the department seeks to strengthen co-operative governance, through instruments such as the Green Paper on Co-operative Governance and the policy review process, we would appeal that extensive consultation with us, as the SA Local Government Association, Salga, be emphasised and prioritised. The same goes for the induction of a number of support and monitoring mechanisms, such as the special purpose vehicle for infrastructure and the inspectorate for fraud and corruption that the Minister referred to. The ultimate objective of these initiatives must be to build and strengthen a decentralised form of government. We premise this on the assumption that the country has not lost faith in a decentralised system of government and in the role of local government.
Whilst we would welcome additional support to municipalities, we must be careful and ensure that these instruments are indeed consistent with our developmental local government objectives and are not indicative of national government appearing to have lost faith in the decentralised system of government and attempting, through policy and legislation, to centralise powers and functions.
Moreover, in intervening and supporting municipalities, national and provincial government must realise that there is a dialectical relationship between capacity and responsibility: both work on condition of and define the other. Absence of responsibility diminishes the force to build capacity and vice versa. Therefore, any policy or legislative intervention and support should not take away responsibility for service delivery from municipalities.
In 2009, Salga recommended a comprehensive review of the local government fiscal framework. While there has been common agreement on the challenges, there has since been little progress to resolve them. In our view, there needs to be a comprehensive review of the fiscal framework to address the fundamental structural challenges rather than introducing minor ad hoc adjustments to improve operational efficiency in the short term.
While there have been some attempts to introduce a differentiated approach to local government finance, we believe that there must be a comprehensive review outlining a long-term vision for sustainable local government finance. This must entail a differentiated approach to all the main elements of the fiscal framework configurations: expenditure assignment, revenue assignment, the vertical division of revenue, the local government equitable share, conditional grant design, infrastructure funding and borrowing powers.
One of our continued struggles over the past decade has been inadequate support for councillors, in comparison to our national and provincial counterparts. Despite our comprehensive submissions to the commission, the remuneration and benefits of councillors have not been addressed conclusively, which still results in significant inconsistencies between remuneration and benefits for office bearers in the national and provincial government vis--vis those in local government.
If we are serious about having a strong local government sphere and about establishing a developmental local government and a vibrant democracy, then we must put our money where our mouth is. We must have due regard to the vulnerability and safety of councillors through remunerating them accordingly and providing them with appropriate insurance cover.
With these discrepancies and the number of councillors who have lost their lives, the message we are sending to our political parties and the state is that local government is not important: you send your senior politicians to national and provincial government, and whoever is left is deployed to local government. Yet councillors are at the coalface of delivery and bear the brunt of citizens' unhappiness. This is where we need experienced political leadership the most.
On the role of organised local government, it is a fact that Salga is undertaking legislated functions regarding its mandatory participation in the various intergovernmental relations structures. The extent and form of such participation, and whether representation is set at national or provincial level, is effectively required in terms of the legislation. On that basis, we have consistently argued, and again appeal, that the mandatory participation in the intergovernmental relations structures should be funded by the national fiscus. The current application is miniscule in relation to the obligation participation imposed on us as Salga.
Salga plays a crucial role in the intergovernmental arena on behalf of local government. Yet Salga's part-time leadership, most of whom are mayors in municipalities, is expected to participate in Parliament and its committees, formal and informal intergovernmental structures, and many other forums where its counterparts are employed full time. In order to optimise local government's participation in key national and provincial structures, full-time political leadership at the helm of Salga must become a reality.
In order to play its role effectively, Salga needs adequate resources, both human and financial: full-time councillors to represent local government in all intergovernmental relations structures, where their participation is required, and to advance the local government agenda are critical if Salga is to be effective as a representative body of local government. Failing this, Salga will continually struggle to represent local government, at the least adequately, or at best effectively, in these kinds of structures.
In conclusion, we want to consolidate the gains made in the last decade by addressing some of the fundamental constraints hampering local government in our quest to effect development, so that the third generation of councillors who have just stepped into the fray and those after them have a more stable, sound and equitable policy framework to deliver on their developmental mandate.
We are committed to working with the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs to ensure an integrated approach to service delivery and the realisation of the developmental vision of local government. We trust that the department will take these issues into account as we begin our work for the next term of local government.
Ndiyabulela, Sihlalo. [Kwaqhwatywa.] [Thank you, Chairperson. [Applause.]]