Business Day
*Back Shiceka to fix municipal mess* *Editorial, Business Day, Johannesburg, 2 December 2010*THERE is no doubt that Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka is taking his task of preventing the collapse of municipal governance across large swathes of the country very seriously. He is one of the most creative and hardest working ministers in President Jacob Zuma 's Cabinet, which is fortunate because he has his work cut out for him.
Many, if not most, local governments in SA are dysfunctional to a greater or lesser extent, although the situation in the smaller towns and more rural provinces, such as North West, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape, is particularly acute. And since it is at this level of government that the bulk of basic service delivery must occur, this represents a major headache for the African National Congress, not to mention Mr Shiceka's Cabinet colleagues. Water Affairs Minister Edna Molewa , for instance, is doomed to fail in her primary task of ensuring SA has safe and sustainable supplies of water for the decades to come if Mr Shiceka does not succeed in his job.
If the delivery mechanism collapses, as is already starting to occur in some parts of the country due to a combination of a dearth of skills and endemic corruption, the flood of urbanisation that is already putting unbearable strain on our cities will become a tsunami, with dire sociopolitical consequences.
The reasons so many municipalities are floundering are no longer in serious dispute. The legacy of apartheid planning is a given --- every town and city in SA has had to take on the burden of extending to all of its citizens the basic services that in many cases were enjoyed only by a privileged minority. However, there is nothing that can be done about that now; time spent lamenting SA's regrettable past is time wasted.
The other two major causes of municipalities' predicament --- the lack of skills and wastage of resources through incompetence and corruption --- can and must be addressed. However, as acting chairman of the Financial and Fiscal Commission Bongani Khumalo spelled out to Parliament's portfolio committee on co- operative governance last month, it is no good coming up with turnaround plans if it means local authorities being bogged down with bureaucracy they don't have the staff to manage.
The national government's failure in the past to co-ordinate the policies and interventions of its departments --- the attempt to restructure electricity distribution, which deprived municipalities of a vital source of income without providing an alternative, is a case in point --- must be resolved before wholesale intervention can take place.
Mr Shiceka's latest plan --- the establishment of a "special purpose vehicle" to pool scarce engineering and municipal financial skills and use them strategically to sort out the worst cases first --- has considerable merit, especially as a quick fix for those areas where delivery has ground to a halt and towns are on the brink of collapse. This is an ideal opportunity for the government to make use of the engineering skills that are now available in the private sector, which is experiencing a post-World Cup slump. It is not a long-term solution, though, since the operation and continuing maintenance of municipal infrastructure is just as important as building it in the first place.
In the long run, the skills shortage will be resolved only by training more appropriately qualified people and ensuring they are appointed on merit, rather than "deployed" as part of the jobs-for- pals system that now prevails. That, and following through with the Special Investigative Unit's crackdown on municipal corruption, is going to take considerable political fortitude on Mr Shiceka's part. We can only hope that he will get all the support he needs from the very top.
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