By Nontshi Shange
The year 2020 marks a year that no South African will forget. In the face of a pandemic, we as a nation have had to rely on all levels of government to lead us and place us as citizens first. Many have been in hopeless situations due to the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown.
The government has allegedly looted R500billion in COVID-19 social relief funds. This corruption has left the nation in crisis, on the edge of an election year. As voters prepare for the 2021 local government election, how can we as a country elect civil servants who will serve with integrity and begin to rectify the corruption of the previous local municipality?
On 9 December 2020, renowned broadcaster Cathy Mohlahlana moderated the final Conversation Lab panel of 2020 on Fixing Local Government, ahead of the 2021 election. The panel included political experts: Dr. Thina Nzo, Dr. Crispian Olver, and Miyelani Holeni.
Dr. Crispian Olver says that as a country, we need to focus on two issues: the legacy issues caused by Apartheid and political meddling.
More than 25 years after Apartheid, “we have a huge legacy problem in the way that South Africa was divided up and segregated racially, and people forced into different parts of the country and governed by very unequal municipalities and that legacy still hangs over us,” says Dr. Olver.
Continuing Dr. Olver’s points, Miyelani Holeni touched on how when looking at local government, financial constraints and institutional arrangements need to be considered when looking at their functionality and how these legacy systems have caused these issues.
The second issue is a set of political problems caused by the overbearing political meddling in the various administrations. These lead to bad policies and changes taking place without acknowledgment of the opinions of the bureaucrats. Dr. Thina Nzo says the partisanship of local elections has allowed local governments to be corrupt. The partisan nature leaves local municipalities compromised due to the loyalty of citizens to their political incumbents.
“What are these audit outcomes and declining quality of services really telling us about the quality of representative democracy?” questioned Dr. Thina Nzo in her critiques of the partisan nature of local elections stating this has left the local government bureaucracy decapitated.
Local government is in a state of flux due to the multiple reconfigurations throughout the 5-year appointment, which Miyelani believes places them at a disadvantage. He states that most municipalities don’t have the economic base to fix themselves due to the poor funding model that exists to take them forward.
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