SALGA - 25th Anniversary
SALGA: CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT “SALGA’s determination to establish transformed and well-governed local government remains robust; one that will stimulate growth and reignite societal well-being in a post-COVID future,” Thembi Nkadimeng, ex-President of SALGA, now Deputy Minister of CoGTA
T
he South African Local Government Association (SALGA), one of the unique children of a democratic South Africa celebrates 25 years since its birth in November 1996 with jubilation and with angst. It has been two-and-a-half decades of great achievement in the unchartered waters of a democratic local government in the country whilst facing storms of unparalleled challenges; and the voyage continues! The organization was brought into existence by the country’s constitution at a time when South Africa was trying to understand and interpret the very constitution that SALGA was being anchored on. Moreover local government had existed prior to SALGA’s birth, but it was governed and coordinated by fragmented institutions that only served the privileged few in apartheid South Africa.
Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, ex-Mayor of Tshwane aptly put it when he said; “Local government entered a new era with the adoption of the Constitution. For the first time in our history, a wall-to-wall local government system was introduced.” Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, ex-Mayor of Tshwane
Each of the four pre-1994 provinces had a local government association. These associations were based on the apartheid segregation policies and were organized as follows;
The structure was not just fragmented, but it was also steeped into a deep racial culture that ignored the greater need outside of the “formal towns”. What made amalgamation of the structure challenging was that this had to be done within the confines of a negotiated settlement. Hence local government was one of the issues negotiated in Codessa 1 & 2 in the 1990s.
• The Transvaal Municipal Association; • The Cape Province Municipal Association; • The Orange Free State Municipal Association; and • The Natal Municipal Association.
Mr Zamindlela Titus, Lead ANC Technical Negotiator at CODESA described it aptly when he said: “In 1992 we then met at CODESA 1 and 2 after whose collapse we had the negotiation forum. At the first instance, we had to say to ourselves: what type
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Municipal Focus
of South Africa do we need? [The intent was that…] even if we have not done anything that is visible to South Africans, at least we need to identify what it is that we ought to do to demonstrate to all and sundry that we are serious about change. We then said let us start by de-racialising local government because we had a local government system which was racially based. We said, then, even before we start the negotiations process beyond September 1992, let us agree on the de-racialisation of local government, the government sphere that is closest to the people. That led to the enactment of the Local Government Transition Act.”
