For government to ensure that local government is able to respond to the needs of a capable and developmental State, South Africans from all walks of life must help to contribute to the building of financially sustainable local government.
This was the argument of Cooperative Governance Deputy Minister, Thembi Nkadimeng, during a Parliamentary debate of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Tuesday.
A Joint Sitting of the National Assembly (NA) and the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) are on Tuesday and Wednesday debating the President’s SONA, which he delivered last week. President Ramaphosa will respond to the debate on Thursday.
In this regard, Nkadimeng said National Treasury had made undertakings on local government financial management matters.
The Department of Cooperative Governance, she said, leads on governance, institutional development, citizen engagement and coordinate service delivery in collaboration with sector department.
“SALGA is driving the empowerment process of both administrators to perform their functions better, and also councillors to improve their oversight responsibilities and enforce accountability,” she said.
“This multipronged approach operates under different development pillars and goals and also ensures as part of Monitoring and Oversight – DPME, AGSA, STATSSA are involved and assist in overseeing municipal performance through planning, budgeting, streamline reporting.”
The team, Nkadimeng said, has initiated reforms like performance indicators for local government that are being piloted across all municipalities towards developing an Early Warning System.
She said the main objective of this is to ensure that the department diagnoses challenges early and promptly provide support before a municipality become dysfunctional.
The Deputy Minister conceded that access to basic services remains a challenge in some communities, especially in the rural parts of the country and informal settlements.
“The improvement of local government service delivery, including the provision of electricity, water and sanitation, is therefore a critical aspect of our developmental state,” she said.
In response to this challenge, she said COGTA had dispatched engineers and technical experts through MISA, that are implementing a range of capacity building interventions.
Promoting Economic Development and Recovery
COGTA has been supporting the alignment of economic recovery plans, with the One Plans in the Districts to leverage on the identified potential and identified comparative advantages. These plans contain a bouquet of interventions targeting various sectors in the economy to mitigate the worst immediate effects of the pandemic and recently loadshedding on businesses, communities and individuals.
Nkadimeng said while the journey of local government over the past 25 years in South Africa has been “an imperfect transition”, government would not “tire”.
With persistence, she said the local government sphere had recorded key notable achievements in the 2020/21 audited financial outcomes.
These include:
- The MIG programme was allocated R5 billion in the 2020/21 financial year. The full amount was transferred and 91% of this was reported as spent by municipalities.
- 53 469 households were provided with basic water; 43 979 households were provided with sanitation services and 79 671 households were provided with street and community lighting.
- COGTA, through MISA, completed 118 boreholes for water provision and no less than 24 000 households benefited . In the 2022/23 FY, 39 borehole projects were implemented, in line with S154, which mandates national and provincial government to assist municipalities to deliver basic services.
- Community infrastructure, with regard to waste collection and disposal, has been developed. Eleven central collection points for refuse, transfer stations, recycling facilities and solid waste disposal sites have been developed.
- 1 474 kilometres of municipal roads have been developed. – SAnews.gov.za
