The Constitution of South Africa directs that 'in the Republic, government is constituted as national, provincial, and local spheres of government which are distinctive, interdependent, and interrelated. All spheres of government and all organs of state within each sphere must observe and adhere to principles of co-operative government'. Amongst others these principles obligate organs of state to 'respect the constitutional status, institutions, powers and functions of government in the other spheres, not assume any power or function except those conferred on them in terms of the Constitution; exercise their powers and perform their functions in a manner that does not encroach on the geographical, functional or institutional integrity of government in another sphere. This would include co-operating with one another in mutual trust and good faith by, (i) fostering friendly relations; (ii) assisting and supporting one another; (iii) informing one another of, and consulting one another on, matters of common interest; (iv) co-ordinating their actions and legislation with one another; (v) adhering to agreed procedures; and (vi) avoiding legal proceedings against one another'.
These constitutional provisions normatively define the conduct of intergovernmental relations in South Africa. They limit the risk of arbitrary and prerogative IGR practice associated with democratic orders that have sub national jurisdictions with independently procured political mandates and independently raised fiscal revenue. The interactions and transactions between and amongst organs of state in the various spheres of government, all of which form the gamut of intergovernmental relations, would in such a dispensation require a 'rule of law' bureaucracy.
Arbitrary section 100 and 139 interventions in sub national government jurisdictions, in-party intergovernmental dispute resolution mechanisms on the basis of a 'family-members-only' IGR system, intergovernmental grants that carry no 'coal face of delivery' management discretion when in 'family-members-only-IGR' contexts, fear and/or reluctance to intervene in 'non-family-members' jurisdictions even where these are repugnant to established national standards, lack or absence of standard operating procedures to regulate intergovernmental relations, and a centralised national budget policy that is not spatial, are all intergovernmental relations behaviours that have made the prospect of our democracy to be at risk when exposed to one-partied-multi-party dominance arrangement.
The relentless section 100 and 139 interventions in jurisdictions governed at all spheres by the same political party, and the practice of keeping administrations with new political mandates under administration, paint a grim picture of an ungoverned IGR system that is growing more complicated by the day, not just for the practice of IGR, but for the developmental objectives of the state and government certainty required by a foreign direct investment trapped economy such as ours.
Given this distressing reality, the suggestion of a possibility of creating standard operating procedures, intervention regulating legislations envisaged in both sections 100 and 139, have tended to be met with skepticisms that are in the main 'centrist government' defending and anti the inside the RSA Constitution 'federal and decentralisation' logic of governing the state. The normative demands of a decentralist post 1994 constitutional dispensation have been choked by the 'in-family-political-siblings' adversarial relationships that abused IGR interventions and intergovernmental grant allocations criteria to levels the smooth functioning of the state became a secondary issue. It has since made it all but impossible to enforce the co-operative government principles as a normative framework within which IGR operates, including realising if such are violated within the covering 'blanket' of a 'family-members-only' IGR system.
For the purpose of this rendition, family members only IGR occurs in a condition where one political party governs all spheres/tiers/levels of government. In this condition a party hierarchy system, with its toe the party line limitations, or closing the ranks system to avoid creating gaps else where, and in-party factional interests, dominates how organs of state relate. Party squabbles, including gate keeping of talent by manipulating intergovernmental relations processes including grants tend to take precedence over the exigencies of service delivery. Post 1994 South Africa has had a government party in a political honeymoon which made it to never imagine a context when the political power could be referenced against what the constitution has envisaged in its IGR or co-operative government principles. A 'dinner-table' IGR system developed with all its wrongs and dysfunctions. Reference to 'family-members-only' IGR includes even jurisdictions in the Western Cape where the provincial governing party is in a similar honeymoon. November 2021 elections have necessitated this distinction to draw a line between what would be unfolding and what is ending, a democratic ecdysis of some sort.
In the Northwest Province, for example, the provincial government was put under administration for two consecutive administrations, the fifth and sixth administrations. In this situation, there were municipalities that were kept in section 139 administration by a under section 100 administration administration. The executive authority of provincial government was withdrawn together with the withdrawn municipal executive authority it had already withdrawn without a meticulous process and criteria. To date there is still a process to 'find' the executive obligation that the provincial government of the Northwest could not fulfil, let alone a national standard that was undermined. What followed was a 'family-members-only' discretionary and prerogative provincial state that lacked guides from a 'legitimate' authority emanating from the body politic commensurate with standing arrangements of South Africa's democracy. For skeptical IGR scholars and practitioners, this served as yet further evidence that establishing norms for responsible state behavior in the conduct of IGR is becoming a pipe dream.
Yet this scepticism was more revealing of the need to establish an intergovernmental relations practice regime that ultimately becomes an institution of leadership beyond political incumbents. This would require a process that institutionalises norms and values embedded in the chapter 3 principles of the Constitution and strengthening them over time. Observed violations of these principles have to date rendered the normative IGR process the Constitution demands to look irrelevant, whilst they remain central to holding the accountability mechanisms built into the constitution to secure a stable democratic order. Whilst the chapter 3 co-operative government principles create a legitimacy reinforcing context for intergovernmental relations to be normative, they are vulnerable to the prerogative whims of political incumbents who operate on a platform that is in variance with a rule of law dependent order.
Despite the interactive and transactive nature and character of IGR, and the unique challenges this poses to a 'democratic centralism' believing governing political elite, IGR has been able to position itself more as an operating platform than an ideology of governing, it is in fact a practice preoccupied with how the various spheres of government get to govern. As a democracy matures, and its norms hold, IGR has in other democracies emerged as the arbiter to most disputes politics could not resolve. The capacity of organs of state to operate an IGR system is not only a capable state requirement, but a 'how-to-govern' condition for state performance in a democracy that guarantees the freedoms our constitution has entrenched. The record of establishing norms in other auxiliary functional areas of government offers a useful place to start—and should dispel the notion that intergovernmental relations reduces the power and strength of the centre, in fact, for the periphery to adequately respond to the centre, effectual and transactive IGR is pre-conditional.
THE NEW NORMAL AND REALITY
'Family-members' are losing political power at strategic economic nodal zones of South Africa's political economic life. The 2021 municipal elections outcomes were unprecedented in how they redefined the intergovernmental relations landscape and by extension the pulse of South Africa's constitutional democracy. The interactive and transactive demands of the new coalition governments, mainly established by a 'majority of minorities', will not only add to the costs of time to reach intergovernmental agreements, but will wrestle the service delivery momentum out of the hegemonic control of national and provincial governments that are used to 'family-members-only' IGR. A prudent IGR strategy will have to begin by recognising the inseparability of statewide planning with the dominance of municipalities on spatial configurations of human settlements, and thus household livelihoods as a motive of economics.
The opposition posture of new municipal governments, the integrated development planning power they wield, the sovereign stakeholder engagement power they have over investor confidence attraction, the 'at-my-doorstep' influence they have on household in-country migrations, and their proximity to almost all ideation institutions of South Africa, makes these jurisdictions the new context of many other contexts South African. The various intergovernmental relations structures, mostly adept to the 'family-members-only' IGR practice will now be circumcised to accommodate 'new and proven' mandates to do things differently. Furthermore, IGR involves a blurring of elected and appointed organs of state vulnerabilities. Elected and appointed individuals as organs of state are a network of influence, their decisions have far reaching implications on how a society turns out to be, in fact, history is a recordal of decisions of individuals as organs of state and private entities over time. Unlike the buildings that these individuals operate within, the network and networking character of IGR, government does not control it, and yet can harness it to impact on household livelihoods.
Accordingly, the new political normal will increasingly start establishing new hegemonies of service delivery and how beneficiaries relate with the 'state' at their doorstep. Restitutive service delivery tradeoffs, the biggest of grievances from the hegemonically dominant within the 'majority of minorities' coalitions, will be subjected to renegotiations at micro-jurisdictional impact level. The true power and impact of municipal executive authority power in the gentrification of society and calibrating the pulse and momentum of social cohesion will be the new ideological domain within which gains and/or losses of the recent past could be truncated. Central planning departments like Treasury, CogTa, DPSA, M&E, and the Presidency might have to regroup and posture differently into the new context. A back to basics approach that focuses on 'how-to-govern' might well be what the voter has ordered.
In the realm of service delivery, the individual as organ of state, although still central to the relations part, the truism that the currency of IGR is data and information might have reduced the relevance and influence of such individuals. The growing embrace of data to be shared in a non-rival manner as this make possibilities out of it to be exponential and innovation attracting, has in fact reduced the distance between households and actual service delivery. As a domain of influence individuals as organs of state will in the near future be replaced by interactive centres that would be algorithmic to the service delivery needs of society as Informatiom from the surveillance government infrastructure feeds into non-rival data repositories. Whilst the new coalitions are an expression of the physical votes cast in an election, the growing expectations of society is to be found where they now live, and this is in the fast, highly networked, multi-referenced, profoundly interactive, and service speed spoiled digital or cyber world whereat government is the firewalls that your username and password cannot give and guarantee access to.
In intergovernmental relations operational parlance, the speed of thought might well make new demands on the speed of response. The local government sphere remains the immediate and in touch harvester of societal needs for the whole of government to respond. It is the taps that give water at homes, the switches in households that bring light, the flushing toilets that work, and the off my yard roads quality that define the performance or otherwise of a state. How these get to be done is an aspect of the policy making and implementation matrices whose interdependence and interrelatedness, and without vitiating their distinctiveness, are always assumed. Amongst the special features of IGR is the erosion of silo planning, the speed of interaction between and amongst organs of state, and the ease of service quality information flow within society. Whilst these feature are of strategic value to practically all that are in IGR, the demand for diplomacy and negotiations by IGR in a 'family-members-only' spoiled context of IGR might be experienced as a nuisance.
What might compound capacity to navigate the new normal as ordered by the municipal voter, is the extent to which the budget planning policy is ready to go or be spatial in character. Since the budget is the resources expression of government intents, and thus policy trajectories the governing party would have chosen, in the new spaces a cocktail of conflictual relations might have been served, save if a deliberate and accelerated intergovernmental relations approach is adopted, for service delivery's sake. With a dependency of 'cadre deployment' and its attendant reliance on the political of skills of its deployed, the technical capability demands that the new normal would make on the bureaucracy will require intergovernmental relations sensitivity training of a scale never imagined by national and provincial government. Whilst the politics of government have to date been the currency for selecting bureaucrats, the exigencies of delivery and staying true to project and program demands defining a better life for all households are growing into new criteria for selection and placement. November 01 has made it clear that the centrality of the citizen as a voter, and not a member of a political party is growing. What is not clear though is the extent to which organs of state are adapting to, or facing, this reality.
HOW DO WE RESPOND
Intergovernmental relations is not a one size fits all affair. It is a profoundly human relations centric endeavour dependent of what needs to be delivered in programmatic terms. The technical is skills prowess of those taking intergovernmental agreements and other instruments to logical implementation stages define the ease of relationship flows required in the new normal.
First, we should take a view that IGR, if functional, must transcend constitutionally recognised patterns of government involvement to include a variety of relationships between and amongst organs of state.
Second, we should built an IGR practice that lives to the adage that it is the humans clothed with various offices that determine the pulse and character of intergovernmental relations. Our capacity building interventions should, and for IGR purposes, have a greater scope of emphasis to attributes required for a IGR intensive constitutional arrangement we have. This would mean IGR should be characterised by consensus building, mutual adjustment to voter approved political mandates, and pacifying dominant interests representing coalitions,
Third, we should model the relationships and relations between organs of state upon the utility value of information they share as currency with which to transact after interactions. IGR should thus get to a point where it is regulated by standardised practice notes, without vitiating the asymmetric trait that it has,
Fourth, the IGR system should recognise all organs of state as actors in one operating system. Recruitment at all levels should include sensitivity to this roles,
Lastly, the IGR system should be operated as a dimension of policy. Formulation, implementation, and evaluation of interactions and transactions of organs of state between and amongst spheres of government should anchor fiscal issues as the policy concern of good and functional IGR.
In configuring this, a new, intergovernmental relations system, the focus should be on the 'how-to-govern' and 'what standard operating procedures' should be in place to create a service delivery driven IGR system. This approach should be about ridding the IGR system of 'family-members-only' tendencies in favour of a normative and in-constitution and rule of law defendable IGR system. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela
🤔Thinking IGR
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