Strategies for municipalities facing a governance crisis

PROF SIPHAMANDLA ZONDI

In the week when the Auditor-General decried the state of governance in the municipalities, the Nsikayezwe Management Consultants hosted an insightful conference on municipal strategy in Durban. The AG (Tsakani Maluleke) had revealed that while only 33 of 257 municipalities improved their audit outcomes since 2020-21, some 29 had seen major reversals resulting in worse outcomes than before.

She revealed that the negative trend had to do with instability in many municipalities. We know that this has to do with the spillover of party politics into council business. It also has to do with the difficulty in managing coalitions in municipalities including big ones like Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay. This is why these big metros do not feature in the category of municipalities that attained clean audits repeatedly. Only Cape Town and Ekurhuleni do.

In KwaZulu-Natal, only King Cetshwayo District Municipality, Okhahlamba and uMhlathuze local municipalities have sustained a clean audit status more than once in succession. King Cetshwayo had a clean audit for two years in a row, uMhlathuze for 3 years and Okhahlamba for a whopping 8 years.

Another reason the AG found contributed to this crisis was weak governance manifest in weak internal controls, poor monitoring, inadequate oversight and consequence management. This suggests that many municipalities are failing to do the very basics that they are expected to do. This is scandalous.

Bringing together officials from many municipalities and municipal agencies in KwaZulu-Natal, the dialogue focused quite strongly on the conditions that contribute to this crisis. It discussed factors that undermine governance and development in municipal areas.

On one hand, these challenges have to do with local conditions such as resource dynamics, capacity available to municipalities, institutional cultures and local political dynamics. The conference provided an ample opportunity to understand how these conditions limit the ability of municipal councils to fullfil their promises to people.

The question- what might be done under current legislation and plans to improve governance and service delivery led to lots of ideas placed on the table. These include capacity building for councillors and management. It includes strengthening citizen oversight and provincial support to municipal efforts to strengthen internal governance. It is also about more strategic use of municipal development agencies where they exist to facilitate innovative actions, especially in local economic development.

There is a lot that can be achieved using innovative digital technologies and ICT tools to improve the quality of governance and its outcomes. These tools can also help overcome capacity constraints and improve public participation in local government.

Interesting insights that were generated pointed to the value of greater cooperation and coordination within municipalities. The current legislative and policy frameworks promote this culture of cooperation even among municipalities. Initiatives like the District Delivery Model are methodological innovations that can enhance integrated planning and action across municipalities. The challenges municipalities face are often similar and overlapping.

A lot was said about the value and the significance of strategy development. This is the basic but systematic process of making choices about what should be done, by whom, how and by when. It also identifies key stakeholders and their roles. The key about this is that it is, as we heard, principally about solving problems residents face to enable better lives. The well-being of the people, the quality of their lives, is the principal preoccupation of the strategy process.

Municipalities will not be able to break the culture of complacency, under-performance, malgovernance and poor outcomes unless they replace this with another culture, one of diligence, vigilance, accountability and responsibility. Unless it instils positive values of care, compassion, punctuality, cooperation and such, the tendency towards division and instability will persist.

It is on the basis of strategy that the fine-tuning of the structure of the municipal administration may happen. Similarly, resource allocation and mobilisation are also derived from the strategy developed in an inclusive and transparent process with a great degree of honesty.

Such a strategy should help us resolve issues that remain about cooperation between municipalities and indigenous leadership (ubukhosi).

An inclusive strategy process enables ubukhosi to make inputs throughout and to be also responsible alongside others for the implementation of the same. This must be done on the basis of understanding the fundamental reasons why there are sometimes tensions or non-cooperation between municipalities and ubukhosi.

No strategy will succeed, we heard, unless it takes due consideration of the international environment that municipalities now tap into through international cooperation activities like twinning exercises.

This environment is marked by global trends such as the abundance of deficits felt across the world including deficits of money, jobs, skills, and so forth. By working with their counterparts in other countries, our municipalities can improve their ability to overcome their own problems. We heard that many municipalities may not realise the competitive advantage they bring into their cooperation with others in the world.

The conference resolved that it was crucial for us all to urge positive actions in all municipalities. It is important to support and back efforts to fix governance problems. It is crucial to promote more awareness not just of problems but of potential opportunities.

For this reason, the conference on municipal strategy will be an annual exercise giving an opportunity to all stakeholders to give impetus to positive change in the performance of municipalities.

Professor Siphamandla Zondi is the Director of the Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation and a volunteer for Devoted Citizen NGO.

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