INTRODUCTION AND STRATEGIC CONTEXT
The South African Local government and governance environment has undergone a number of changes. The changes are in the main visible at the level of policy direction definition as opposed to implementation. The role of local government as the ultimate service delivery agent of the bulk of government-initiated services is undoubted. The policy development market of South Africa has unfortunately over the past few years reflected a supply driven tendency as opposed to the ‘traditional’ demand driven mode. This has had an unprecedented impact on politicians’ view of local governance and government.
The generation of local government policy and implementation did not however, change the mandate of local government in South Africa. The South African Constitution sets this mandate as the following objects:
- to provide democratic and accountable government for local communities.
- to ensure the provision of services to communities in a sustainable manner
- to promote social and economic development
- to promote a safe and healthy environment; and
- to encourage the involvement of communities and community organisations in the matters of local government
A closer look at the objects reflects a macro-economic framework within which local government should operate. Local government is in terms of the constitution obliged to “provide” only democratic and accountable government for local communities. The force of this state of affairs is that local government and/or other role players (and not limited government) can provide services to attain the other objects. Local government as a government agent has a limited monopoly over service delivery; this market is in terms of the constitution open to “suitable” bidders. This therefore relegates the role of government to be in the main that of co-ordinating and/or commissioning delivery, and delivering where there are no market players, often referred to as private suppliers.
The South African Local government and governance environment has undergone a number of changes. The changes are in the main visible at the level of policy direction definition as opposed to implementation. The role of local government as the ultimate service delivery agent of the bulk of government-initiated services is undoubted. The policy development market of South Africa has unfortunately over the past few years reflected a supply driven tendency as opposed to the ‘traditional’ demand driven mode. This has had an unprecedented impact on politicians’ view of local governance and government.
The generation of local government policy and implementation did not however, change the mandate of local government in South Africa. The South African Constitution sets this mandate as the following objects:
- to provide democratic and accountable government for local communities.
- to ensure the provision of services to communities in a sustainable manner
- to promote social and economic development
- to promote a safe and healthy environment; and
- to encourage the involvement of communities and community organisations in the matters of local government
A closer look at the objects reflects a macro-economic framework within which local government should operate. Local government is in terms of the constitution obliged to “provide” only democratic and accountable government for local communities. The force of this state of affairs is that local government and/or other role players (and not limited government) can provide services to attain the other objects. Local government as a government agent has a limited monopoly over service delivery; this market is in terms of the constitution open to “suitable” bidders. This therefore relegates the role of government to be in the main that of co-ordinating and/or commissioning delivery, and delivering where there are no market players, often referred to as private suppliers.
The centrality of partnerships in service delivery is therefore ensured, provided that such partners are not narrowly defined to mean only the private sector, but also other sections of the recipient communities such as non-governmental organisations and organs of civil society. The importance of partnership in local government service delivery is further amplified by the developmental role that the constitution imposes upon this sphere as well as central role of “communities” in the service delivery process.
It is also worth mentioning that local government in South Africa is a sphere of government that is distinct from others. The distinctiveness referred to is inextricably tied to local government’s interrelatedness and interdependence with other spheres. Local government as a sphere has a number of Municipalities that are jurisdictional agents on the whole of the territory of South Africa. The function of local governance is therefore not limited to municipalities but includes an array of stakeholders within the public service delivery value chain; these include organs of state, civil society organisations, non-governmental bodies as well as community-based bodies in their defined interest coalitions.
The above strategic context redefines therefore the form and nature of South African local government and governance. In this document SA local government from 1993 to date will be outlined. The document will also focus on developmental local government, as a key element to give effect to the stated constitutional objects. The emerging trends within the sector will be described. In conclusion the context of Project Ubudlelwane will be explained.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1993-2002)
The time-line demarcation is based on the promulgation of the Local Government Transition Act of 1993 that kick started local government reform in South Africa. The LGTA was promulgated to provide a legal framework within which local government transformation and reform would occur. The intention was to ensure that the change process is managed in such a manner that all elements of statehood are maintained albeit in a major socio-political transformation.
The LGTA process established non-elected local government forums that established temporary councils. These councils were to usher-in the interim phase. The interim phase was designed to ensure that new municipalities are created; a final local government system is established as well as ensuring that the legacy of apartheid local government is liquidated.
The interim phase in its attempt to integrate the racially segregated municipalities created new municipalities. These municipalities were 832 in number. Municipal government remained transitional in this phase and there was a resolve within the South African political circles that they had to be reduced in number.
The transition phase ended in 1999 when South Africa established the 287 municipalities that conformed to the municipality types criterion in the Constitution. The 287 Municipalities are all directly elected and still retained their developmental role.
DEVELOPMENTAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT AS A KEY TO GIVING EFFECT TO LG OBJECTS – THE TRANSFORMATION CHALLENGES
The ancestral policy reference point for developmental local government remains the Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP). The RDP identified integrated development planning as both a state and community function for institutionalisation in those state institutions that interface, on a regular basis, with communities; local government in particular. Municipalities as custodians of local economic development strategies and embodiments of local democracy and accountability were therefore obliged through legislation to develop integrated development plans (IDPs). IDPs are, politically speaking, the institutionalisation of both the RDP and periodic electoral mandates into government programmes.
The integrated development planning process has, to date, emerged as a key municipal strategic planning tool that has grown to become a government-wide planning tool. The Local Government Municipal Structure Act and the Local Government Municipal System Act obligates municipalities to prepare multi-year integrated development plans that must justify local government expenditure. These legislations demand a corporate approach to budgeting where outputs and outcomes get costed over a determined budget expenditure term. This is indeed a shift in local policy financing. The desirability of legislating corporate planning and management is still being questioned in terms of how deep can this be allowed, given the intricacies of managerial autonomy or bureaucratic discretion.
The development challenges of South Africa include, as non-negotiables, meeting basic needs of the community; building the economy; development of human capital; democratisation of the state and society; and implementing policy priorities. The integration of development planning and the process of determining the land development objectives in terms of the Development Facilitation Act represent a critical link between the generic developmental non-negotiables and hard-core government activities. However, the efficacy of the IDP process as a catalyst for development remains an academic issue. The reliance on the IDP process as the ultimate development implementation tool assumes a number of key and inherently critical processes to be resident in municipalities and government in general.
The IDP based planning process assumes that:
• the institutional capacity of municipalities to integrate jurisdictional objectives with broad regional, provincial and national objectives exists.
• the local economic objectives of municipalities are in synch with those of the country.
• municipalities possess all the data about their localities to develop an informed IDP.
• municipalities have transcended the ‘service delivery to the minority’ paradigm and reoriented themselves to the new paradigm of services for all.
• the human capital in municipalities is of a quality that corporate readiness to integrate daily business outputs into broad societal outcomes is prevalent.
• the broad national intergovernmental relations system has in-built mechanisms that obligates integrated planning and spending by all government agencies, including parastatals.
• provincial local government coordinating agencies possess the required capacity and authority to monitor and supervise integrated development planning by municipalities.
• “communities” that must underpin the planning process are properly defined in terms of ‘who they are’, ‘what is their role’, and ‘when do they input into plans’.
• all councils have the financial and other resources to prepare IDPs, this includes a skills base that matches the sophistry inherent in IDP designing.
• the powers and functions of municipal, provincial and national jurisdictions are well articulated and jurisdictional ambiguities are resolved through a functional intergovernmental relations dispute resolution mechanism envisaged in Chapter 3 of the Constitution.
• the institution of traditional leaders is integrated into the IDP planning framework in a manner that does not undermine either popular democracy or traditional authority.
• the demarcated municipal boundaries have taken into consideration the resource capacity of municipalities and the communities they are serving.
• municipalities are administratively aligned to perform the basics of accounting, record keeping and knowledge management requisite of functional integrated development planning.
The above assumptions are indicative of the transformation challenges that faced and still face local government.
The Department of Provincial and Local Government and the President’s Coordinating Council have identified local government capacity building as a strategic focus area. The identification is on the basis of trying to create capacity to make the above assumptions a reality. The capacitating of the local sphere of government is seen as a major catalyst in poverty reduction as well as growth and development. This has however sharpened contradictions often associated with the debate around capacity building.
The debate around capacity building has always been around what is capacity and how do you go about building it. The words capacity building evoke a number of emotions to many people, with the result being a paradigm biased interpretation of what it really means. The broad South African approach towards capacity building has been focused on training and more training. Whilst there is a growing change in understanding the default position remains the traditional “chalk and talk”, with little relation to practice. The need to redefine capacity building in broad terms to include physical skill transfer, exchanges, case study, learnerships and experiences remain an assumptions fracturing exercise necessary for local government and governance in South Africa.
The significance of Organised Local Government as a governance catalyst is in the interface between what the appointed state does vis-Ã -vis the elected part of the state South African protest politics has in the last decade of the pre-1994 era been managed through labour Unions. The culture of politics prevalent therein, particularly as a result of the predominance of a profoundly leftist dogma, generated an adversarial relationship between and amongst coalitions in any contestation. The South African Organised Local Government constituency (councillors) has this pre-1994 history as a career socialisation reality. The continuing “central committee” culture of the trade-union movement as well as the democratic centralisation tendencies reminiscent of socialist and/or communist movements have found a relatively safe, though not predominant, haven in the OLG sector of South Africa. This probably accounts for the emerging centrist approach towards organized local government.
Organised Local Government has, however, played a significant role in the transformation of the sphere, particularly during the interim phase. The South African Local Government Association (SALGA) articulated the development cues of local government in intergovernmental forums. The focus on training by SALGA since 1994 has had a greater spin-off, in a sense, though the bulk of government capacity building interventions was for councillors. The striking indicator for this has been the growth in number of municipal officials who were first councillors. Whilst there is an advantage in this scenario, practice is starting to reveal that most of these former councillors have not transcended from being politicians to becoming officials.
The above development issues that underpin local government and governance have triggered a number of policy trends. The implementation of the South African Local Government policy framework as encoded in legislations has also yielded an array of challenges that could also be classified as trends. The experiences of the South African Foundation for Public Management through its relationship with the Australian South Africa Local Governance Partnership has also revealed emerging trends that impact on local government. The latest President’s Co-ordinating Councils resolutions as well as the changing global polity have redefined the focus of local government in development.
THE EMERGING TRENDS IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT
The emerging trends in local government and governance are classified into the following broad categories:
• Building democracy
• Facilitation of rural development
• Enhancing economic growth through local economic development initiatives
• Promotion of government wide planning
• Knowledge management and partnerships
The 2000 Municipal elections marked the end of the interim phase in local government and ushered in a new South African local government. The local government system is however still in its evolutionary stages. The 832 municipalities were rationalised into 284 municipalities. This process has, in practical terms, only meant a number exercise since the real integration issues have yet to be resolved. The psycho-political migration from an apartheid type of local government compounded by the psycho-socialisation impact that apartheid had on South Africans, magnifies the challenge to unimaginable proportions. The creation of any system of government is dependent not only on the cognitive intelligence of functionaries but also on their social and emotional intelligence. The legacy of apartheid socialisation has left a number of innovation and creativity defeating tendencies. These are in the main the greatest discounters of many capacity building interventions. However, It is the resolution of this integration coupled with the building of a new system of local government that the under mentioned trends are contextualised.
• BUILDING DEMOCRACY
The present municipalities are all directly elected and therefore legitimate in electoral terms. The operations of these municipalities should be within the community participation paradigm that underpins the ‘building democracy’ resolve in the South African policy management arena. The present municipal councillors are in the main elected in terms of party lists. The operation of the local government machinery is therefore dependent on party politics. The citizen as the ultimate arbiter between policies and needs is relegated to party membership involvement. The IDP process remains the only vehicle for non-party aligned citizens to influence local policies and service delivery. The structural deficiencies presented by a grey definition of the community present interesting representational challenges. The current party political floor crossing debate with an ongoing constitutional court litigation is essentially about the role of the voter in influencing decisions between elections.
EMERGING TREND
The definition of Community is in most municipalities exclusive of the previously white organs of civil society and thus undermining (bankrupting) local policy development of “community” wide involvement. The need to define in real terms who is the “community” that the constitution refers to.
The need to embark on projects that target organs of civil society in an apolitical manner. This will enable local government to be dialectic in its service delivery initiatives. The encouragement of local democracy is not dependent on party politics but can be enhanced through the development of service oriented social movements.
• FACILITATION OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT
The demarcation of the whole of the territory of South Africa into municipalities meant that every inch of SA land is placed under a municipal jurisdiction. The direct implication of this is that rural development will be facilitated within the municipal planning framework and therefore subject to an IDP prioritisation process. The South African rural communities have historically been subjected to the authority of either traditional leaders or farm owners. The balance of power, and therefore political influence and manipulation has, since the 2000 election, changed hands and now resides with “popularly” elected representatives, with the exception of rural Kwa-Zulu Natal.
The traditional realities of tribal and landlord loyalty have in theory been disrupted and replaced with the ward councillor system. The relationship between this democracy and property a ownership is yet to be unravelled. This is compounded by the traditional land ownership debate that informed traditional governance systems. Integrated rural development as a local government and intergovernmental relations function has in the process become a casualty of these contest.
EMERGING TREND
The historical importance of traditional leaders is gaining momentum. The redefinition of traditional leaders as possessing a certain amount of authority over traditional settlements is underway. The position of traditional leaders in the hierarchy of South African political life is growing (the growth of various monarchy’s budgets indicates this). The developmental roles of traditional leaders have a sustainable effect on rural growth and development.
Poverty alleviation programmes will in the next electoral campaigning era enjoy predominance over urban renewal. Capacity interventions will focus on rural councils, with urban councils given a degree of asymmetry in terms of policy rollout.
• ENHANCING ECONOMIC GROWTH THROUGH LED’S
The Municipal Demarcation Board has demarcated municipalities on criteria that had the bulk of its load on economic viability. The development nodal points as dictated by the traffic of business activity and growth of particular markets informed this economic viability rationale. The reality is however that the present crop of municipalities still has to grow into this economic outlook of government activity. There are however certain Municipalities that took political decisions around the location of municipal “capitals” and therefore economic centres. This has had a tremendous impact on the service delivery capacity of these centres.
EMERGING TREND
The management of local economic development initiatives will be community based and allow for local entrepreneurship as well as resources to drive development. The importance of established economic centres will be instructive to LED plans. Municipalities will engage in corridor as well as cluster development initiatives and thus create an economic development value chain that is sensitive to local resources and talent. The growth of the craft market and tourism based industries in Northern Kwa-Zulu Natal lionizes the importance of this.
The requirement that Integrated Development Plans should measure the impact of municipal expenditure on growing the local economy is a positive trend within the South African local government system. The technological support presented by wireless telephony and communication has catapulted local economic development initiatives forward. The growth of markets for locally produced goods amplifies this trend.
Capacity building initiatives will focus on economic development literacy for municipal officials and politicians.
• PROMOTION OF GOVERNMENT WIDE PLANNING
The policy making cycle of government has, since the 2000 local government elections, been systematically linked with the budget planning cycle. Whilst there is still more to be done in this area, the intergovernmental focus on multiyear planning frameworks of municipalities and then provincial agencies is an indication of an emerging budget cycle stability within the South African fiscal planning processes.
The requirement that IDP should incorporate funding of all services synchronises government wide spending and planning. This is supported by the fact that the whole of the SA territory is part of a municipal jurisdiction. In theory, spending by government on any matter in the Republic should be traceable in municipal IDPs. The involvement of communities at the grass roots level of government ensures that government wide planning is community monitored and supervised.
EMERGING TREND
The integrated development planning system has triggered a central planning tendency in government. Whilst the distinctiveness of the local sphere is guaranteed, the growing centralisation of planning “approval” in central institutions such as the National Budget Council, The President’s Co-ordinating Council and Department of Provincial and Local Government undermines decentralisation.
The need to co-ordinate municipal integrated development planning at the central level of government has had SALGA’s federal structure as a casualty. The restructuring of SALGA lionizes the growth of the central planning tendency (even in a sector that essentially depends on diversity and therefore attracts a diverse group of residents).
• KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PARTNERSHIPS
The transformation and reform of the local government sphere is not a new phenomenon in the recent South African history. The provincial government sphere has undergone a merger and de-merger process that saw the integration of the erstwhile apartheid created administrations. The process of integration has had important lessons that were supposed to have informed this last phase of government structural reform. The inability for the system to learn from recent past experiences is an indicator of gaps in the SA knowledge management and learnership system.
Developments in so-called developed democracies have been underpinned by reliance on organised entities of knowledge generation such as professional associations and sector associations. The establishment and current restructuring of SALGA, for instance, reflects a discontinuity in the historical patterns that informed establishment of such bodies. The ever-increasing number of capacity building and consultancy service providers in the sector is also indicative of an absence of institutional memory trapping bodies outside government. The velocity of new policy formulation, even on matters that have been conceptualised sometime in the historical past of South Africa, reflect yet another discontinuity in the knowledge management arena of South Africa.
The polarisation of policy direction by consultants and non-local government experts, coupled with an absence of a donor intervention strategy, compounds the knowledge management domain of local government. The medieval and often archaic capacity building interventions of higher institutions of learning, supported by a slow pace of pedagogical reforms in the broad education system creates implementation culture discontinuities. The perpetuation of non-practice informed teaching by most tertiary institutions and a little to no reference to case studies, relegates the practice generated knowledge to archival material.
The absence of deliberate partnerships, outside ‘the chalk and talk’ mode of capacity building’, between institutions of higher learning and local government is also creating dysfunctionalities in the knowledge management and partnerships domain. The recent Cabinet Lekgotla decision to focus on professional bodies as repositories of transformation knowledge as well as generators of science and practice informed knowledge is a positive step towards remedying the problem.
EMERGING TREND
National agencies will, in terms of the previous Cabinet Lekgotla and the recent ANC policy conference decisions, be focusing on supporting professional associations.
The centrality of the Institute of Local Government Managers in facilitating non-government implementation transformation initiatives is growing.
The enhancement of the local government research initiatives of DPLG is an indication of a growing realisation by government of the need to inform higher education learning.
The focus on local government as an eclectic discipline not limited to public administration and management has yielded a focus on disciplines such as supply chain management, bookkeeping and statistics as key components of local government capacity building.
The co-ordination of IDPs at provincial co-ordinating centres such as the KZN IDP forum is generating centralised knowledge sharing and therefore management.
The AUSAID founded UBUDLELWANE project that focuses on practitioner based intervention and exchange has had a paradigmic impact on the redefinition of capacity and capacity building in local government.
CONCLUSION
The transformation of local government in South Africa represents ‘the last miles of the long walk to freedom’. Freedom in this instance will include the final integration of; society and communities; politics and community participation; economics and governance; citizen based loyalty and party political loyalty; as well as practice and theory. The need to reflect at some point in history, probably now, on how South African is the emerging local government system has never been so urgent.
The transformation programme of local government has over the past few years been focused on post-democratic reform. The normal default position for such reforms is an over emphasis on redress and restitution. Whilst it is imperative to pursue a restitutive agenda in all aspects of local government transformation, it is worth noting that the broader national polity dictates a nation-building paradigm as opposed to an ‘us and them approach’. The management therefore of local service delivery should by design begin a process of being inclusive of all stakeholders in localities.
A post-democracy reform paradigm that has historically informed liberation movements in other parts of the world needs to be dropped in favour of state building. The wisdom of the South African Constitution drafters to ensure that the transition to democracy is enacted, as opposed to the state machinery disruptive approaches followed elsewhere, should be pursued even in local government. The destined fruits of the long walk will surely begin to be within our grasp. The horizons of local government transformation are however linked to the dynamism inherent in societal growth and development.
Na Khensa
It is also worth mentioning that local government in South Africa is a sphere of government that is distinct from others. The distinctiveness referred to is inextricably tied to local government’s interrelatedness and interdependence with other spheres. Local government as a sphere has a number of Municipalities that are jurisdictional agents on the whole of the territory of South Africa. The function of local governance is therefore not limited to municipalities but includes an array of stakeholders within the public service delivery value chain; these include organs of state, civil society organisations, non-governmental bodies as well as community-based bodies in their defined interest coalitions.
The above strategic context redefines therefore the form and nature of South African local government and governance. In this document SA local government from 1993 to date will be outlined. The document will also focus on developmental local government, as a key element to give effect to the stated constitutional objects. The emerging trends within the sector will be described. In conclusion the context of Project Ubudlelwane will be explained.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1993-2002)
The time-line demarcation is based on the promulgation of the Local Government Transition Act of 1993 that kick started local government reform in South Africa. The LGTA was promulgated to provide a legal framework within which local government transformation and reform would occur. The intention was to ensure that the change process is managed in such a manner that all elements of statehood are maintained albeit in a major socio-political transformation.
The LGTA process established non-elected local government forums that established temporary councils. These councils were to usher-in the interim phase. The interim phase was designed to ensure that new municipalities are created; a final local government system is established as well as ensuring that the legacy of apartheid local government is liquidated.
The interim phase in its attempt to integrate the racially segregated municipalities created new municipalities. These municipalities were 832 in number. Municipal government remained transitional in this phase and there was a resolve within the South African political circles that they had to be reduced in number.
The transition phase ended in 1999 when South Africa established the 287 municipalities that conformed to the municipality types criterion in the Constitution. The 287 Municipalities are all directly elected and still retained their developmental role.
DEVELOPMENTAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT AS A KEY TO GIVING EFFECT TO LG OBJECTS – THE TRANSFORMATION CHALLENGES
The ancestral policy reference point for developmental local government remains the Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP). The RDP identified integrated development planning as both a state and community function for institutionalisation in those state institutions that interface, on a regular basis, with communities; local government in particular. Municipalities as custodians of local economic development strategies and embodiments of local democracy and accountability were therefore obliged through legislation to develop integrated development plans (IDPs). IDPs are, politically speaking, the institutionalisation of both the RDP and periodic electoral mandates into government programmes.
The integrated development planning process has, to date, emerged as a key municipal strategic planning tool that has grown to become a government-wide planning tool. The Local Government Municipal Structure Act and the Local Government Municipal System Act obligates municipalities to prepare multi-year integrated development plans that must justify local government expenditure. These legislations demand a corporate approach to budgeting where outputs and outcomes get costed over a determined budget expenditure term. This is indeed a shift in local policy financing. The desirability of legislating corporate planning and management is still being questioned in terms of how deep can this be allowed, given the intricacies of managerial autonomy or bureaucratic discretion.
The development challenges of South Africa include, as non-negotiables, meeting basic needs of the community; building the economy; development of human capital; democratisation of the state and society; and implementing policy priorities. The integration of development planning and the process of determining the land development objectives in terms of the Development Facilitation Act represent a critical link between the generic developmental non-negotiables and hard-core government activities. However, the efficacy of the IDP process as a catalyst for development remains an academic issue. The reliance on the IDP process as the ultimate development implementation tool assumes a number of key and inherently critical processes to be resident in municipalities and government in general.
The IDP based planning process assumes that:
• the institutional capacity of municipalities to integrate jurisdictional objectives with broad regional, provincial and national objectives exists.
• the local economic objectives of municipalities are in synch with those of the country.
• municipalities possess all the data about their localities to develop an informed IDP.
• municipalities have transcended the ‘service delivery to the minority’ paradigm and reoriented themselves to the new paradigm of services for all.
• the human capital in municipalities is of a quality that corporate readiness to integrate daily business outputs into broad societal outcomes is prevalent.
• the broad national intergovernmental relations system has in-built mechanisms that obligates integrated planning and spending by all government agencies, including parastatals.
• provincial local government coordinating agencies possess the required capacity and authority to monitor and supervise integrated development planning by municipalities.
• “communities” that must underpin the planning process are properly defined in terms of ‘who they are’, ‘what is their role’, and ‘when do they input into plans’.
• all councils have the financial and other resources to prepare IDPs, this includes a skills base that matches the sophistry inherent in IDP designing.
• the powers and functions of municipal, provincial and national jurisdictions are well articulated and jurisdictional ambiguities are resolved through a functional intergovernmental relations dispute resolution mechanism envisaged in Chapter 3 of the Constitution.
• the institution of traditional leaders is integrated into the IDP planning framework in a manner that does not undermine either popular democracy or traditional authority.
• the demarcated municipal boundaries have taken into consideration the resource capacity of municipalities and the communities they are serving.
• municipalities are administratively aligned to perform the basics of accounting, record keeping and knowledge management requisite of functional integrated development planning.
The above assumptions are indicative of the transformation challenges that faced and still face local government.
The Department of Provincial and Local Government and the President’s Coordinating Council have identified local government capacity building as a strategic focus area. The identification is on the basis of trying to create capacity to make the above assumptions a reality. The capacitating of the local sphere of government is seen as a major catalyst in poverty reduction as well as growth and development. This has however sharpened contradictions often associated with the debate around capacity building.
The debate around capacity building has always been around what is capacity and how do you go about building it. The words capacity building evoke a number of emotions to many people, with the result being a paradigm biased interpretation of what it really means. The broad South African approach towards capacity building has been focused on training and more training. Whilst there is a growing change in understanding the default position remains the traditional “chalk and talk”, with little relation to practice. The need to redefine capacity building in broad terms to include physical skill transfer, exchanges, case study, learnerships and experiences remain an assumptions fracturing exercise necessary for local government and governance in South Africa.
The significance of Organised Local Government as a governance catalyst is in the interface between what the appointed state does vis-Ã -vis the elected part of the state South African protest politics has in the last decade of the pre-1994 era been managed through labour Unions. The culture of politics prevalent therein, particularly as a result of the predominance of a profoundly leftist dogma, generated an adversarial relationship between and amongst coalitions in any contestation. The South African Organised Local Government constituency (councillors) has this pre-1994 history as a career socialisation reality. The continuing “central committee” culture of the trade-union movement as well as the democratic centralisation tendencies reminiscent of socialist and/or communist movements have found a relatively safe, though not predominant, haven in the OLG sector of South Africa. This probably accounts for the emerging centrist approach towards organized local government.
Organised Local Government has, however, played a significant role in the transformation of the sphere, particularly during the interim phase. The South African Local Government Association (SALGA) articulated the development cues of local government in intergovernmental forums. The focus on training by SALGA since 1994 has had a greater spin-off, in a sense, though the bulk of government capacity building interventions was for councillors. The striking indicator for this has been the growth in number of municipal officials who were first councillors. Whilst there is an advantage in this scenario, practice is starting to reveal that most of these former councillors have not transcended from being politicians to becoming officials.
The above development issues that underpin local government and governance have triggered a number of policy trends. The implementation of the South African Local Government policy framework as encoded in legislations has also yielded an array of challenges that could also be classified as trends. The experiences of the South African Foundation for Public Management through its relationship with the Australian South Africa Local Governance Partnership has also revealed emerging trends that impact on local government. The latest President’s Co-ordinating Councils resolutions as well as the changing global polity have redefined the focus of local government in development.
THE EMERGING TRENDS IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT
The emerging trends in local government and governance are classified into the following broad categories:
• Building democracy
• Facilitation of rural development
• Enhancing economic growth through local economic development initiatives
• Promotion of government wide planning
• Knowledge management and partnerships
The 2000 Municipal elections marked the end of the interim phase in local government and ushered in a new South African local government. The local government system is however still in its evolutionary stages. The 832 municipalities were rationalised into 284 municipalities. This process has, in practical terms, only meant a number exercise since the real integration issues have yet to be resolved. The psycho-political migration from an apartheid type of local government compounded by the psycho-socialisation impact that apartheid had on South Africans, magnifies the challenge to unimaginable proportions. The creation of any system of government is dependent not only on the cognitive intelligence of functionaries but also on their social and emotional intelligence. The legacy of apartheid socialisation has left a number of innovation and creativity defeating tendencies. These are in the main the greatest discounters of many capacity building interventions. However, It is the resolution of this integration coupled with the building of a new system of local government that the under mentioned trends are contextualised.
• BUILDING DEMOCRACY
The present municipalities are all directly elected and therefore legitimate in electoral terms. The operations of these municipalities should be within the community participation paradigm that underpins the ‘building democracy’ resolve in the South African policy management arena. The present municipal councillors are in the main elected in terms of party lists. The operation of the local government machinery is therefore dependent on party politics. The citizen as the ultimate arbiter between policies and needs is relegated to party membership involvement. The IDP process remains the only vehicle for non-party aligned citizens to influence local policies and service delivery. The structural deficiencies presented by a grey definition of the community present interesting representational challenges. The current party political floor crossing debate with an ongoing constitutional court litigation is essentially about the role of the voter in influencing decisions between elections.
EMERGING TREND
The definition of Community is in most municipalities exclusive of the previously white organs of civil society and thus undermining (bankrupting) local policy development of “community” wide involvement. The need to define in real terms who is the “community” that the constitution refers to.
The need to embark on projects that target organs of civil society in an apolitical manner. This will enable local government to be dialectic in its service delivery initiatives. The encouragement of local democracy is not dependent on party politics but can be enhanced through the development of service oriented social movements.
• FACILITATION OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT
The demarcation of the whole of the territory of South Africa into municipalities meant that every inch of SA land is placed under a municipal jurisdiction. The direct implication of this is that rural development will be facilitated within the municipal planning framework and therefore subject to an IDP prioritisation process. The South African rural communities have historically been subjected to the authority of either traditional leaders or farm owners. The balance of power, and therefore political influence and manipulation has, since the 2000 election, changed hands and now resides with “popularly” elected representatives, with the exception of rural Kwa-Zulu Natal.
The traditional realities of tribal and landlord loyalty have in theory been disrupted and replaced with the ward councillor system. The relationship between this democracy and property a ownership is yet to be unravelled. This is compounded by the traditional land ownership debate that informed traditional governance systems. Integrated rural development as a local government and intergovernmental relations function has in the process become a casualty of these contest.
EMERGING TREND
The historical importance of traditional leaders is gaining momentum. The redefinition of traditional leaders as possessing a certain amount of authority over traditional settlements is underway. The position of traditional leaders in the hierarchy of South African political life is growing (the growth of various monarchy’s budgets indicates this). The developmental roles of traditional leaders have a sustainable effect on rural growth and development.
Poverty alleviation programmes will in the next electoral campaigning era enjoy predominance over urban renewal. Capacity interventions will focus on rural councils, with urban councils given a degree of asymmetry in terms of policy rollout.
• ENHANCING ECONOMIC GROWTH THROUGH LED’S
The Municipal Demarcation Board has demarcated municipalities on criteria that had the bulk of its load on economic viability. The development nodal points as dictated by the traffic of business activity and growth of particular markets informed this economic viability rationale. The reality is however that the present crop of municipalities still has to grow into this economic outlook of government activity. There are however certain Municipalities that took political decisions around the location of municipal “capitals” and therefore economic centres. This has had a tremendous impact on the service delivery capacity of these centres.
EMERGING TREND
The management of local economic development initiatives will be community based and allow for local entrepreneurship as well as resources to drive development. The importance of established economic centres will be instructive to LED plans. Municipalities will engage in corridor as well as cluster development initiatives and thus create an economic development value chain that is sensitive to local resources and talent. The growth of the craft market and tourism based industries in Northern Kwa-Zulu Natal lionizes the importance of this.
The requirement that Integrated Development Plans should measure the impact of municipal expenditure on growing the local economy is a positive trend within the South African local government system. The technological support presented by wireless telephony and communication has catapulted local economic development initiatives forward. The growth of markets for locally produced goods amplifies this trend.
Capacity building initiatives will focus on economic development literacy for municipal officials and politicians.
• PROMOTION OF GOVERNMENT WIDE PLANNING
The policy making cycle of government has, since the 2000 local government elections, been systematically linked with the budget planning cycle. Whilst there is still more to be done in this area, the intergovernmental focus on multiyear planning frameworks of municipalities and then provincial agencies is an indication of an emerging budget cycle stability within the South African fiscal planning processes.
The requirement that IDP should incorporate funding of all services synchronises government wide spending and planning. This is supported by the fact that the whole of the SA territory is part of a municipal jurisdiction. In theory, spending by government on any matter in the Republic should be traceable in municipal IDPs. The involvement of communities at the grass roots level of government ensures that government wide planning is community monitored and supervised.
EMERGING TREND
The integrated development planning system has triggered a central planning tendency in government. Whilst the distinctiveness of the local sphere is guaranteed, the growing centralisation of planning “approval” in central institutions such as the National Budget Council, The President’s Co-ordinating Council and Department of Provincial and Local Government undermines decentralisation.
The need to co-ordinate municipal integrated development planning at the central level of government has had SALGA’s federal structure as a casualty. The restructuring of SALGA lionizes the growth of the central planning tendency (even in a sector that essentially depends on diversity and therefore attracts a diverse group of residents).
• KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PARTNERSHIPS
The transformation and reform of the local government sphere is not a new phenomenon in the recent South African history. The provincial government sphere has undergone a merger and de-merger process that saw the integration of the erstwhile apartheid created administrations. The process of integration has had important lessons that were supposed to have informed this last phase of government structural reform. The inability for the system to learn from recent past experiences is an indicator of gaps in the SA knowledge management and learnership system.
Developments in so-called developed democracies have been underpinned by reliance on organised entities of knowledge generation such as professional associations and sector associations. The establishment and current restructuring of SALGA, for instance, reflects a discontinuity in the historical patterns that informed establishment of such bodies. The ever-increasing number of capacity building and consultancy service providers in the sector is also indicative of an absence of institutional memory trapping bodies outside government. The velocity of new policy formulation, even on matters that have been conceptualised sometime in the historical past of South Africa, reflect yet another discontinuity in the knowledge management arena of South Africa.
The polarisation of policy direction by consultants and non-local government experts, coupled with an absence of a donor intervention strategy, compounds the knowledge management domain of local government. The medieval and often archaic capacity building interventions of higher institutions of learning, supported by a slow pace of pedagogical reforms in the broad education system creates implementation culture discontinuities. The perpetuation of non-practice informed teaching by most tertiary institutions and a little to no reference to case studies, relegates the practice generated knowledge to archival material.
The absence of deliberate partnerships, outside ‘the chalk and talk’ mode of capacity building’, between institutions of higher learning and local government is also creating dysfunctionalities in the knowledge management and partnerships domain. The recent Cabinet Lekgotla decision to focus on professional bodies as repositories of transformation knowledge as well as generators of science and practice informed knowledge is a positive step towards remedying the problem.
EMERGING TREND
National agencies will, in terms of the previous Cabinet Lekgotla and the recent ANC policy conference decisions, be focusing on supporting professional associations.
The centrality of the Institute of Local Government Managers in facilitating non-government implementation transformation initiatives is growing.
The enhancement of the local government research initiatives of DPLG is an indication of a growing realisation by government of the need to inform higher education learning.
The focus on local government as an eclectic discipline not limited to public administration and management has yielded a focus on disciplines such as supply chain management, bookkeeping and statistics as key components of local government capacity building.
The co-ordination of IDPs at provincial co-ordinating centres such as the KZN IDP forum is generating centralised knowledge sharing and therefore management.
The AUSAID founded UBUDLELWANE project that focuses on practitioner based intervention and exchange has had a paradigmic impact on the redefinition of capacity and capacity building in local government.
CONCLUSION
The transformation of local government in South Africa represents ‘the last miles of the long walk to freedom’. Freedom in this instance will include the final integration of; society and communities; politics and community participation; economics and governance; citizen based loyalty and party political loyalty; as well as practice and theory. The need to reflect at some point in history, probably now, on how South African is the emerging local government system has never been so urgent.
The transformation programme of local government has over the past few years been focused on post-democratic reform. The normal default position for such reforms is an over emphasis on redress and restitution. Whilst it is imperative to pursue a restitutive agenda in all aspects of local government transformation, it is worth noting that the broader national polity dictates a nation-building paradigm as opposed to an ‘us and them approach’. The management therefore of local service delivery should by design begin a process of being inclusive of all stakeholders in localities.
A post-democracy reform paradigm that has historically informed liberation movements in other parts of the world needs to be dropped in favour of state building. The wisdom of the South African Constitution drafters to ensure that the transition to democracy is enacted, as opposed to the state machinery disruptive approaches followed elsewhere, should be pursued even in local government. The destined fruits of the long walk will surely begin to be within our grasp. The horizons of local government transformation are however linked to the dynamism inherent in societal growth and development.
Na Khensa
Good afternoon sir. It is my sincerest hope that this is still an active platform for you. I work for SALGA and would like to get your opinion on it's current state of progress and whether it is what was envisioned on it's conception.
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