Political parties must take responsibility for South Africa's municipal decline
The South African Local Government Association (SALGA) says political parties should take the blame for the state of municipalities in the country.
SALGA president Bheke Charles Stofile stated that political parties are the “invisible hand” that manipulates the performance and fate of municipalities.
Speaking in an interview, he said political parties are central in arresting the decline of municipalities. The Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) recently released a report indicating that while the performance of some municipalities is stagnating, others have shown improvement.
“What the Auditor-General is telling us is that there is governance failure, but if you interrogate that report of the AG, it is a political failure. I have said the biggest challenge faced by local governments generally is the invisible hand,” he said.
“Let us remember that for a councillor to become a councillor, they must come from a political party. Once in council, they are managed by a political party caucus. So whatever you are talking about, if you don’t fix it from the political party level, you are dreaming.”
As an example, he mentioned that at one point, the Mangaung Municipality in the Free State was well-run, but those who were performing were removed by the “invisible hand”. This led to the municipality starting to struggle, and the political party was not held accountable for that.
He emphasised that in order to fix the municipalities, it is important to ask the political parties to play their part in addressing the challenges.
Former statistician general Dr Pali Lehohla stated that service delivery is declining. Speaking in the same interview, he noted that getting committed people in place can go a long way to fixing municipalities. He highlighted that at one time, Msinga local municipality in KwaZulu-Natal was the worst municipality in the country, but it has been progressing rapidly in the past few years.