Why is local government service delivery failing in South Africa?

Poor-quality councillor candidates, politicisation of local government, and rigging of tender procurement processes in favour of companies with political links are some of the causal factors for the collapse of service delivery at the local government level across the country, experts say.

There are multiple local government failures in South Africa, from the City of Johannesburg’s “U-turn” on a R1 billion tender investigation, the Ditsobotla Local Municipality in the North West, which was placed under administration by the national Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) due to political infighting and a collapse of service delivery. 

Ditsobotla, according to CoGTA, adopted unfunded budgets for five consecutive years, accumulated over R1.6 billion in unpaid creditors, defaulted on salary and Eskom payments, and failed to implement court-ordered recovery measures.

There is also an ongoing struggle with housing, such as empty container homes in Alexandra, Gauteng, a R500 million temporary housing project meant to ‘de-densify’ the overcrowded informal settlements of Alexandra during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The crumbling infrastructure, maladministration, financial mismanagement, and service delivery crises in Buffalo City Metro led the Eastern Cape CoGTA to institute an Article 154 intervention last month.

In KwaZulu-Natal, the uMkhanyakude Municipality was initially placed under administration for its failure to meet its executive obligations, including poor governance, financial instability, and a service delivery crisis, particularly regarding water provision. Following a legal challenge by the municipality, where it argued that it had made sufficient progress to warrant the end of the administration, the KZN government subsequently withdrew its administration and provided support.

These municipalities were flagged in the findings of the Auditor-General (AG), Tsakani Maluleke.

Professor Purshottama Reddy, a public governance expert from the Graduate School of Business and Leadership at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said that local government has, over the past two decades, gradually declined to a level of dysfunctionality that can be described as ‘critical’, where it cannot even render basic services. 

“There are several reasons for this dysfunctionality, namely the politicisation of local government, which included inter alia cadre deployment and ‘jobs for pals’; rigging of tenders and lack of consequences management. A significant number of municipal functionaries — councillors and officials elected and appointed — are merely there to collect salaries, allowances, and perks. 

“The passion for the task at hand, that is, improving service delivery and enhancing the quality of life of the local communities, is not there. There is a lack of political and management will in this regard. Many of these municipal functionaries don’t have the required technical expertise and leadership to ensure that these municipalities are discharging basic services and, more importantly, are sustainable politically, managerially, and financially longitudinally,” Reddy said.

He added that South Africa has ‘world-class legislation’, but the implementation or non-implementation is a challenge, and harms good governance. 

“There is a strong legislative and policy framework in place in South Africa to combat corruption and respond to financial mismanagement at the local level. However, the lack of firm implementation and decisive action has bedevilled the process. 

“In the absence of consequences management, which includes criminal prosecution, this type of skulduggery is likely to continue in the future. Some of the transgressers should be flushed out of the system. Instead, they move on to higher positions through the courtesy of their political parties. Many of the municipal functionaries know that they are just there for a limited period, that is, five years, so it is a question of ‘making hay while the sun shines’ and securing themselves and their families for the future,” Reddy said.

He explained that the local electorate needs to hold the municipal functionaries and the political parties accountable for responsive service delivery and good local governance. They need to be more vocal and question them publicly, using public meetings, the media, and holding them accountable.

He added that the leadership of political parties must be questioned publicly and held accountable. 

Reddy highlighted that it has also dawned on the leadership of political parties, since the watershed elections on May 29, 2024, that they cannot take the electorate for granted. They can change their political loyalties at any time if electoral promises are not honoured.

He said politicians should not interfere in administration and vice versa. However, this is flouted regularly as some executive politicians tend to become very powerful and abuse their authority, where they interfere in administrative matters, thereby benefiting personally or politically. 

“There are certain distinct factors that can serve as red flags to provide some indication that the municipality is failing. These include public protests against poor service delivery at the local level; high staff turnover, particularly at the executive and senior management level; increasing levels of corruption and tenders being rigged, where service delivery is compromised.

“Clean audits do not necessarily equate to responsive service delivery or good local governance - it is a compliance issue, and sometimes too much emphasis is placed on that aspect,” Reddy said.

Professor William Gumede, a governance expert from Wits University, said the problem starts with political parties that put incompetent people as councillors, and people who vote for those councillor candidates.

“During the apartheid era, we had councillors, but they were part-time. They were not full-time, as is the case now. The councillors had other jobs and they would only go to the council offices for a meeting once a week, for example, for an hour or so. In a company, this is like a board meeting, where you only go once a month or once a week. Normally, the people who were ward councillors were very professional. There were very few councillors, and now we have big councils.

“Coming to what’s happening now, the quality of people who are elected as councillors is poor. Two reasons are that political parties field poor-quality candidates, and secondly, people vote for incompetent candidates. Any company or organisation that is run by incompetent people will collapse. I wish every South African could understand this competence, such as having qualifications, and knowing what you are doing,” Gumede said.

Unfortunately, the problem is that CoGTA, at the national level, takes very long to intervene, he said. Political parties must begin to take on their own members. Provincial CoGTAs and the national CoGTA must step in when there are red flags, not when the services have collapsed.

He added that if the management of the public service of the local government (including city managers) are deployees, people appointed based on political reasons and not for competence, it creates a double whammy of failure.

“First, you have politicians who don’t have competence, and then you have your public servants who are also incompetent. There is no way that the municipalities can function like that. If we appoint incompetent people, we must understand and accept that there will be no service delivery,” Gumede said.

“We have to depoliticise public service by not appointing political people to the public service. In countries like Sweden, you get fired from being a public servant if you are a member of a political party or seen attending a political party meeting.”

He added that South Africa must get politicians out of the oversight role, because oversight is scrutinising whether decisions were made fairly, not for politicians to interfere with how the decisions should be made.

Municipal oversight bodies, such as Municipal Public Accounts Committees (MPACs), are not independent enough. They are often very weak in terms of capacity, and these positions are also politicised, he said. 

Gumede highlighted the importance of maintaining and protecting infrastructure, saying that if the country doesn’t maintain its infrastructure at the national level, everything becomes expensive.

He added that countries whose infrastructure is up to standard are growing economically, and that in Asian countries, if you destroy state infrastructure, it is treated as treason, and you get the death penalty.

In a statement, CoGTA Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa reiterated his department’s commitment to restoring stability, governance, and service delivery in Ditsobotla and ensuring that the financial recovery plan is implemented effectively to benefit residents and rebuild public trust. 

“Our stance is clear in that Every Municipality Must Work. The people of Ditsobotla deserve reliable services, ethical leadership, and a municipality that is financially sound and responsive to their needs,” Hlabisa said. 

He added that the interventions are not temporary measures but part of a sustainable transformation strategy to restore public trust. 

gcwalisile.khanyile@inl.co.za