FOR HOW LONG WILL PUBLIC FUNDS BE WASTED WITHOUT A PERMANENT SOLUTION?

Each year the Auditor General publishes a report on how local government funds have been spent.

Without getting into deep analysis of the annual MFMA reports, because in each issues raised are not dealt with, this article seeks to identify the problem areas and provide possible solutions.

1. CHALLENGES AT LOCAL GOVERNMENT LEVEL

1.1 Pre-election of councillors

There is a problem with the nomination process of potential candidates as councillors. It is during this period that factionalism plays in the open.

Those who are close to leadership would likely be the ones nominated to be councillors, irrespective of their knowledge, skill, and potential. I have witnessed this in my area on many occasions. Each faction would hold separate meetings but at the end of the day, a faction closer to those in leadership positions will be the one to be imposed on people.

What is painful is that after these people were imposed, they disregard the same community they are supposed to serve, and do not know the community needs. They do not hold community meetings. It is not known what they report to the Municipal Council. It is also not known what systems the municipality has in place to ensure active community participation in the affairs of the municipality.

1.2 Election of councillors

Local government has been used as a dumping ground in most of the time where those who failed to be in the national or provincial lists end up being deployed at local government, not due to the appreciation of their skills, but mostly due to appeasing the political party contestations. Once they are deployed, they show no passion for local governance, a sphere they do not understand, as some regard their deployment at that level as political humiliation. It must not come as a surprise therefore when most of these councillors do not care about the municipal processes and the report of the Auditor General because they are misplaced.

Even political parties are to be blamed. It seems once deployees are in the Municipal Council, political parties no longer care whether their candidates do what is expected of them. These political parties do not even go to the community to get feedback on how the community feels about their preferred representative or whether the councillor provides the expected leadership.

1.3 Appointment of senior managers

The problems at local government are not addressed because those in leadership and strategic positions do not want to solve them. They remain unsolved because they do not have the capacity to deal with them and do not know how to arrest them. Let me expatiate on this by presenting a trend analysis approach. It is the Council which employs all senior managers in the municipality. Unfortunately, when they employ these senior officials, the rule book is thrown out of the window to employ those who are politically connected, even if they do not qualify or are under qualified.

It is no longer surprising to hear that a primary school teacher has been appointed as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of a municipality or someone with a background of mathematics has been appointed. When these people are employed, all they know and can do is to transfer party politics to the municipality and champion factional administration by defending the faction which brought them to the municipality.

In other words, and in every financial year to follow, certain municipalities always have a bad audit opinion because those who have been employed to do a job are absent though present. Once there is this continuous trend, civil society groups and the communities themselves start to make noise, and the Council then starts to craft a Plan B to cover their failures and the failures of the parachuted executives. What is this Plan B? This Plan B is the appointment of consultants.

1.4 Appointment of consultants

The Plan B is to appoint consultants to do the job of people who are appointed and are paid monthly. There is often no disciplinary process or sanction against underperforming municipal workers although the mere fact that a Council can appoint consultants when there is a person employed to do the job should be enough to apply consequence management. It is unfortunate that when these consultants are appointed, the ‘municipal tendency’ of recruitment comes into play.

Municipalities employing consultants not on merit but on proximity could end up having unqualified and under qualified executives and inexperienced and incompetent consultants.

Although the Auditor General is against the blatant and overuse of consultants because they do add value, I see the problem being exacerbated by the appointment of incompetent consultants. It is my argument that any action therefore should be directed to the leadership of municipalities for appointing incompetent and inexperience consultants, not the entire consultancy community.

1.5 Lack Of Accountability

Most councillors are not accountable to anyone and have caused instability in the municipality they serve. They undermine the troika, they do not account to their party, or anyone in the line of monitoring and authority. This is political discipline which could have been addressed at a political party level. This is clear evidence that not all who are deployed understand the importance of their role, hence reports by the Auditor General show municipalities that are casualties of these unfortunate deployments. Political parties need to be curious about the performance of their members in the Council.

1.6 Reluctance to take decisions

One of the contributory factors in not addressing the content of the Auditor General’s report is the inability or reluctance to take decisions on time. This should be understood in the context of wrong deployment and wrong appointments. Under these circumstances decisions are either ignored, or the matter is deferred for consultation purposes.

2. WHAT ARE MY PROPOSALS?

It is the view of this article that there should be a paradigm shift if we are to resolve local government challenges, and these challenges are as follows:

• A systemic approach in addressing local government challenges is required, as exposed above.

• Establish a structure like the South African Council for Educators (SACE) to monitor the conduct which includes performance of councillors.

• Municipalities must be required to submit performance reports to this structure on a quarterly basis, including the conduct of individual councillors. The guidelines should be clear such that when a transgression reaches a certain level, this body would be required to advise the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to declare a vacancy. This should be done after the deploying party has been advised to correct the conduct of that councillor within a stipulated time.

• There should be a penalty imposed to such a councillor. It is understood that this might have legislative implications, but if needs be, the amendment of legislation should be the way to go. This should not be confused with section 47 report which is about the institution.

3. CONCLUSION

The Local Government sphere has been the antithesis of what it ought to be. It cannot be correct to use local governance as a training ground for those who aspire to be politicians and administrators. We need to save local government for the sake of those who are vulnerable, illiterate, literate, highly educated, the poor and the rich. I list all these people to demonstrate that local government is for all the people, and when it is not functional, all people suffer irrespective of one’s social standing.

In www.pafadialogue.co.za, I wrote in one my articles something which I want to use in this article as my parting statement that “If you create a culture in any organization of protecting mediocrity, there is no way employees can pull up their socks because the culture tells if you lose there will always be a tomorrow”.

Academic Achievements:

• Advanced Management Development ProgrammeUniversity of Pretoria

• Executive Development Programme - Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

• Bachelor of Social Science (Cum Laude) - University of Fort Hare

• Master of Public Administration (Cum Laude) - University of Fort Hare

• Doctor of Philosophy Social Science in Development StudiesUniversity of Fort Hare 

Contact Details

Contact Person: Dr. Z W Pafa

Cell: 071 618 7325 082 908 6342

Email: info@pafadialogue.co.za

Address: 64 Clark Street, Haven Hills, East London, 5247