PETER BRUCE: North West: a symptom of poor thinking on federalism

Tomorrow, apparently, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is due to announce details of national government’s extraordinary decision to take over, almost completely, the government of the North West Province.

Just in case you’re a bit like me and still get confused about where some provinces end and where some begin, North West runs along a lot of the border between SA and Botswana and then juts into Gauteng, the Free State and the Northern Cape.

Its capital is Mahikeng (formerly Mafikeng) but its biggest city is, wait for it, Klerksdorp. It incorporates what was once the Bophuthatswana Bantustan and is home to some of the world’s biggest platinum mines.

President Cyril Ramaphosa appears to have decided to take over the provincial government after its leadership simply dissolved into thin air. After weeks of violent demonstrations and in the face of a health service brought to a complete standstill by strike action, the province’s premier, Supra Mahumapelo, put himself on special leave and appointed someone to act in his place.

That stretches legality beyond anything a constitution might tolerate. Ramaphosa has intervened in terms of section 100 (1) (b) of the constitution (national intervention in provincial administration). It is abundantly clear he is within his rights. Section 100 says: “When a province cannot or does not fulfil an executive obligation in terms of the constitution or legislation, the national executive may intervene by taking any appropriate steps to ensure fulfilment of that obligation, including...”

The first option (1) is to issue the province a directive. But Mahumapelo has moved beyond such niceties. So (2) comes into play.

“... assuming responsibility for the relevant obligation in that province to the extent necessary to — (i) maintain essential national standards or meet established minimum standards for the rendering of a service; (ii) maintain economic unity; (iii) maintain national security; or (iv) prevent that province from taking unreasonable action that is prejudicial to the interests of another province or to the country as a whole.”

It then goes on to say that the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) must approve of the takeover and if it doesn’t it should end in no more than 180 days, and that the national government should keep the head of the NCOP informed of what is going on and that the NCOP can do its own reviews if it wants to.

You can sort of see the genius in Ramaphosa appointing Dlamini-Zuma, his rival for the ANC leadership, as minister in the presidency for the national planning commission for policy & evaluation. It’s Jeff Radebe’s old job. Sort of nothing until times like this. Suddenly, Mahumapelo’s political future is in Dlamini-Zuma’s hands. He was her most ardent supporter during the run-up to the leadership election last December and is a leading member of what remains of the old Premier League that supported the continuation of former president Jacob Zuma’s corrupt rule.

Apparently the province is a complete mess. Dlamini-Zuma will report to the chair of the NCOP, Thandi Modise, on what is happening tomorrow, Tuesday. We may or may not get to know what she says. Knowing Dlamini-Zuma, she’s never been particularly keen on sharing her thoughts or work with us mere mortals but her “evaluation” of what Mahumapelo has done in and to North West would make interesting reading.

And it is interesting that she, of all people, is heading the intervention in the province because, obviously, while Ramaphosa is on solid constitutional ground in doing it, the politics of it occurs on another playing field and where he is not necessarily in charge. Mahumapelo said he would resign and then didn’t. He simply took leave and appointed someone to act in his position. That’s because he realised one of his provincial critics was going to become premier.

Can Mahumapelo turn his constitutional reverse into a political fightback? There is only so much Ramaphosa can take on at once but in a strange way I suspect Dlamini-Zuma will have his back. We will have to wait and see.

But the one thing the crisis in North West has done is to remind us of the folly of giving the provinces so much power in the first place. A lot of federal systems were looked at. Canada and Germany became the defining models and that was a fatal mistake. I have written many times before that the model to work with should have been Spain.

The Spanish also laboured under 40 years of fascism. They also held a constitutional conference to hammer out a way forward. And they decided that while they would have 17 autonomous regions not all would have the same powers. If a region wants to run, say, its own education service it would have to pass a means test and prove it could run one and sustain it. Otherwise it would be run from the centre, from Madrid.

I know that Catalan separatism is not the best marketing for this dispensation but separatism has always bubbled in Catalonia and the Basque country. Spain, though, has benefited greatly from having competent autonomous regions and where a poor region like Extremadura can’t do much it simply relies on Madrid.

There is no way provinces like the Eastern Cape should be running schools and hospitals. I know of a piece of road in deep Transkei that the provincial government has been trying to tar for more than 12 years and has made no progress whatsoever.

While we are changing the constitution to do really foolish things like make the expropriation of land without compensation even clearer than it already is, why not new clauses simply allowing central government to reclaim, permanently, competences from provinces that cannot use them? And if province X wants to build roads it needs to prove it has the equipment and skills to do what it says it wants to do.

Pie in the sky, I know, but something has to be done about provincial powers. Our future as a country lies with a competent, capable state and competent capable cities. Provinces just get in the way.