Published in the Sunday Time on 07 April 2024.. "Gauteng takes provincial government to new heights.
A common topic of
discussion amongst South Africa's cognitive elites and analysts is the
improbability of a more than 50% performance by one political party in the 2024
national and provincial elections, and some say beyond. Central to the
discourse is the impact of service delivery dysfunction, especially electricity
load shedding and the growing water-shedding, the general disintegration of
public infrastructure, and the increasing unemployment rate.
Core risks to the
ability of any political party to garner more than 50% voter support are the
Jacob Zuma identity vote factor in KZN, the middle-class attraction potential
of the new Black-led liberalism-advocating political parties, the corruption
scandal-prone majority governing party, growing voter apathy as a global
phenomenon, and the voting patterns of Tintswaloes, which we have already seen
between 2016 and 2021.
What is difficult to
discern in these discussions is the extent to which individual provinces will
perform as distinct spheres of government. The South African election campaign
energy is concentrated in KZN, Gauteng, Limpopo, and the Eastern Cape. Except
for the number of voters, these provinces host the commercial, manufacturing, and
government administration heartlands of South Africa. The largest concentration
of traditional leadership institutions decorates the more profound politics of
these provinces.
The least debated question
is which provincial government has performed the best and thus deserves to be
returned to office, because the elections are also about sourcing political
mandate at that sphere of government. There has been little focus on how
provincial governments fared within the constraints of a centralist fiscal
dispensation where collected treasury control is in terms of centrally set
uniform norms and standards. The constraint of centrist political party control
by Federal Councils, National Executive Committees, Central Command Structures
is a factor many of the provincial governments have had to deal with. In other
jurisdictions the dynamic of Section 100 and 139 interventions, including where
it was one governing party, have had an adverse impact on the capability of the
provincial state to execute provincial mandates outside the commandist purview
of national dynamics.
Notwithstanding, in
Gauteng, a case study of decentralised decision-making that unfolded has not
been given the distinct notice it deserves as a good leadership practice. Gauteng could comply with its obligation to a
centrist party line whilst exercising its distinct mandates in the spirit that
the Republic government is constituted as three distinct spheres of government
within one sovereign and unitary state. Despite the federal features of the
Constitution, which have been tempting other jurisdictions even to consider
outright cessation or a confederacy at worst, the conduct of Gauteng has been
that of attempting to reduce its sub-provincial jurisdictions with the quest to
establish a City Region which would be part of a unitary state.
The combination of grit,
courage, and capacity to work the intergovernmental relations system in the
context of three major metropolitan and municipal areas governed through a
coalition arrangement has thus foregrounded the significance of provincial
government in Gauteng. Amid indecisiveness on service delivery matters by agencies
in the national sphere of government, and without a distinct written Provincial
Constitution, Gauteng province’s executive authority and bureaucratic
discretion in its resources was re-prioritised, unleashing the potential of the
provincial government to new levels.
What the provincial
government has set to achieve in the past forty months has seen marked
performance. A regime change will likely slow down service delivery cadence
unless the successor-in-political mandate continues on the set path. Compared
to other provinces, Gauteng has had a decrease in service delivery protests and
instead saw higher approval ratings for its leadership. In terms of the 'where
the tyre hits the road' criteria, the 'NasiSpani' youth employment program,
'amatransformer' electricity transformer fixing intervention program,
'amapanyapanya' visible policing program, and the 'skills training' program
announced on April 06, represent how service delivery through existing state
resources reprioritisation can be done.
The ability to use a
provincial political mandate to force a financial remodelling of a wholly built
infrastructure project, the e-tolls, and
dictate a new repayment regime is an administration decentralisation accolade for
which the Gauteng Provincial Government has not received sufficient credit. What
has been a national competence has in Gauteng found provincial political
mandate expression through the cancelling of e-tolls, the establishment of
visible policing through the provisions of the Department of Justice Acts
regulating Peace Corps, the reprioritisation of the national skills fund to
deliver on a massified provincial skills drive, and many other initiatives.
To understand the growing importance of the provincial sphere of government, and through the prism of Gauteng and the Western Cape, the (less shared) dynamics of provincialisation which happened in the less than 40 months of leadership change in Gauteng must be curated. Whilst there is a general disillusionment with the democratic order in urban spaces, interest in the Gauteng Provincial Government is shifting voter options and opinions inconsistent to dominant polls and studies. The complexity of governing a province such as Gauteng in the context of intergovernmental relations and choking coalition arrangements is what the latter part of the sixth provincial administration has demonstrated is manageable. The coming elections are not only about national government, an honest reflection of what has happened in the provincial sphere would enrich voter choices. CUT!!!.
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