Governing Party Local Government Elections Manifesto. Are there issues to be teased? Instalment no 1.

The African National Congress launched its elections manifesto for the November 1 local government elections on 27th September 2021. The theme of the manifesto is 'Building Better Communities Together'. Whilst the elections are about the household bread and butter issues, as well as citizen primary reception with the hospitality of government, being governed and democracy, the manifesto was rather more nuanced on 'other' politics than the 'politics of citizen primary reception'.

In his maiden speech as President of South Africa, President Ramaphosa defined his local government strategic pathway as one that will be anchored on increasing the efficacy of intergovernmental relations and integrated development planning. He identified the inefficiency of government planning as being an outcome of silo planning and deviations from the 'one plan' government paradigm instructed by the National Development Plan. He posited the District Development Model (DDM), a plan undergirded by the convergence of organs of state planning in the three spheres of government with that of non-state investment planning within the 52 municipal districts. 

President Ramaphosa had identified Districts as local government entry points for state wide planning, implementation and, state revenue expenditure impact monitoring. Accordingly, and as the DDM, advocates, the various 'one plans' of the districts would aggregate into a one provincial plan that would define 'one national plan' within which prioritisation of national spatial planning and 'economic growth' targeting could be done. The manifesto addresses this aspect through a piecemeal approach and is shallow on guiding non-state spending, estimated to be over R6 Trillion, on how to integrate their plans with 'all planning for and about 'building better communities'.

The manifesto has in the main displayed a bias towards the thrust of Ramaphosa's anti-corruption and 'release of the state from all capturers, and would-be capturers', and very thin on the role of a shrinking economic base in propelling the continued view of the State as the economy by those outside the non-state value chains defining South Africa's economy. The statistics on post 1994 high earners in the economy being mainly from gainful public sector employment, including state-owned enterprises, is a reflection of how the 'black middle class' was grown. This middle growth has propelled household anchored economic growth driven mainly by a over 40% in real terms public sector salary increases that still have to be reconciled with their inflationary impact on the economy in general.

The trickle growth of the 'black middle class' in the private sector, somewhat constrained by the huge salary disparities and income gaps, has created a duality in the middle class whose fissures are now being exposed by the Ramaphosa drive to bring efficiencies in the State Owned Entities domain of 'commanding the economy' to be competitive. The catch-up that South Africa has to make in areas of energy security and green energy efficiency, water security management through 4IR based agricultural production efficiencies, and, mass human transit planning efficiencies that are dictated to by a reduced need to commute occasioned by digitisation driven redefinition of 'work', is interrogating the quality of those we defined as the 'new middle class' in skills terms. The shrink of the ' middle class' is thus an outcome of restructuring and work repurposing demands of a changing global economy, and the exigencies of competitiveness imposed by bottom line demands from private firms, as well as the challenges that the market is imposing on the monopolies created as state-owned entities. As these entities negotiate their survival in the competition for their traditional 'clients' or 'beneficiaries', the role of government as energy distributors, water authorities, human settlement planners, and logistics suppliers is concomitantly redefined. 

In local government terms, and 'citizen primary reception by government' terms, this means the shrinking of the middle class would represent a reprioritisation of spending by households. Municipal rates and taxes, a big component of the local state revenue will shrink. The middle class shrink will in this instance be the new 'issue' in local government. The manifesto has not dealt with this where it matters, and that is how to introduce tax breaks, how to use the Property Tax regulatory framework to alleviate the burden of property taxation, the increase of 'free electricity' and basic water supply thresholds to capture those in the 'missing middle'. The shrink of the 'public' in the 'service delivery space' has meant the growth of the 'private' came with it own inflation as a 'demand and supply' control mechanism. This meant private schooling, health care, gated communities, and many other absence of government household needs have eroded the disposable income of households to levels where the cost of middle class livelihood cannot be imagined outside household debt burdening. This, the manifesto has not factored in. 

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