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Abstract
This paper argues that the service‐delivery crisis facing two‐thirds of the municipalities across South Africa is caused by a series of institutional shortcomings ranging from incoherence in national policy towards rural and urban development, a lack of enforcement when it comes to financial controls and competencies, and a lack of skills affecting local officials ranging from customer service and relations, to financial controls, to technical competencies in the core areas of electrification, basic water and sanitation, and refuse collection. Government needs to address the skills shortage at the local level and enforce the rules and regulations concerning the role of public and elected officials to ensure not only service delivery but accountability and transparent decision‐making. Attending to the skills shortage and enforcing relevant rules would ensure better service delivery and, in turn, encourage bringing ‘democracy to the people’, which is at the heart of the post apartheid government’s decentralisation project.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Neil Balchin for his research assistance and for having created all of the tables and figures for this paper. Thomas Koelble would also like to thank the SA National Science Foundation for its generous support under grant #2069058.
Notes
1. We do not believe that the current wave of political protest in South Africa is purely one of reacting against poor service delivery. The protests are multi‐dimensional and express a range of issues from poor service to xenophobia to legitimate concerns about the disempowerment of the poor under the democratic regime. See, for instance, Peter Alexander (Citation2010) or Richard Pithouse (Citation2008) both of whom suggest that service delivery is only one aspect of the current politics of the poor in SA.
2. Our methodology is broadly consistent with that used by Robert Putnam (Citation1993) in his study of Italian local government.
3. The category ‘other’ represents the residual contribution to total operating income of all other potential sources of income to the municipality for example interest income (external and internal), levies, internal billing, rent, and fines (e.g., traffic fines, penalties for overdue payment of service charges).
4. The contributions of the various income sources to total operating income in the selected municipalities are broadly consistent with the income profiles in the remaining municipalities in their respective quintiles.
5. See, for instance, the passages on financial management in Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Citation2009, pp. 54–62).
6. Interview with Philip van Ryneveld, May 2005, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town.
7. This information is drawn from several interviews and conversations we conducted with consultants to the municipalities such as Andrew Siddle who has worked for over 50 of the poorest municipalities across the country in the Eastern and Western Cape, Limpopo, KwaZulu‐Natal and Mpumalanga.
8. The per capita figures are calculated by dividing each municipality’s total operating budget by the total population in that municipality.
9. The figure for Sakhisizwe is one of a series of ‘mystifying’ budget figures for the municipality which reflect inconsistencies in the municipality’s budgeting process.
10. See Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Citation2009, p. 58), where the report notes that even though the equitable share provides funding for the municipalities, metros and the larger urban municipalities are obtaining the lion’s share of funding ‘due to their large and growing poor populations’. We would suggest that the reasons here are far more deep‐seated and have much to do with skills shortages in the poorer municipalities and their inability to apply for funding in the case of conditional grants.
11. For instance, while the constitution and various Acts of Parliament may be quite clear about the various responsibilities of local government, many of the mayors, municipal managers and other officials are simply not aware that certain tasks are theirs to perform. Hardly a municipal manager, when interviewed, knew or cared that air pollution control was part of his or her portfolio! Some laughed nervously at the suggestion that it might be and shrugged their shoulders when asked what the municipality planned to do about it.
12. See Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Citation2009, pp. 60–62).
13. This finding is supported by the Department of Provincial and Local Government (2005, p. 2).
14. It is generally accepted that approximately 30% of the total municipal budget should be spent on staff salaries and no more (Brown Citation2006, p. 12).
15. This figure is for the 2005/2006 financial year.
16. The balance of the capital budget allocation in each municipality (total capital expenditure less total expenditure on these infrastructure items) would have been divided between expenditure on community items (such as sports fields, libraries), other assets (such as plant and equipment, office equipment) and specialised vehicles (such as refuse, fire and ambulance vehicles).
17. The staff‐per‐capita ratios are calculated from the 2001 Census population figures. The figures for the total number of municipal staff are for 2006.
18. The very high ratio in Umzimvubu results from the reality that in 2006 there was a total of only 133 municipal staff members spread across the municipality’s total population of 197,550 residents.
19. No equivalent data was available for the two metropolitan municipalities (City of Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay).
20. ‘DNP’ indicates that the municipality did not perform the function in 2006.
21. Once again, no comparative data was available for the two Metropolitan municipalities.
22. During one of our interviews a rural municipal managers remarked that ‘it is impossible to even get an engineer in this area … They do not want to live here. I don’t blame them’, he sighed.