For 30 years from the dawn of democracy in 1994, the ANC government was strong electorally and legislatively — indeed, when it achieved two-thirds of the national vote under former president Thabo Mbeki, it seemed impregnable. But that political strength masked the increasing administrative weakness of the state itself, at all levels.
Last week finance minister Enoch Godongwana wrote to Joburg mayor Dada Morero to explain why and how the city has wasted more than R24bn in unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
The letter warns that failure to address the city’s crisis could result in the National Treasury invoking section 216(2) of the constitution, which allows it to withhold grant funding — an action that would make the city’s appalling service delivery record even worse.
The minister need not hold his breath. The city has been neglected and corrupted for many years — it is hard to imagine how the finances, let alone the problems with water, electricity and roads, could possibly be sorted out in a fortnight.
He has demanded “a plan of action to address the failure and to implement the necessary consequence management against the responsible officials, including any councillors who may have contributed to the failure”. Good luck with that one, Enoch.
Godongwana’s intervention is an administrative one, but the problems in Joburg are essentially political. In that light, even the Treasury is doomed to prove impotent.
Many municipalities resisted interventions and, for political reasons, were rarely held accountable
Arguably, the rot started in the 1990s, when the governance structures of the city changed. Previously, the mayor was a ceremonial position and elected councillors were not paid a salary. They could claim expenses for travel and phone bills, but would certainly not expect to be able to live on their stipends. Nobody served as a councillor for the remuneration.
Like Eskom and Transnet, Joburg was managed and run by experienced officials, many of them with decades of service. The city offered bursaries and training for engineers, officials and artisans, and often those who signed up remained for life.
Of course during apartheid the city was run by whites, for the benefit of whites. But there was a golden opportunity to extend opportunities to all races, with the municipality still founded on the principle of a neutral and stable professional civil service, overseen by politicians who had no material stake in finances and operations.
Not only in Joburg, the opportunity to extend the benefits of a functioning city to all its people was spurned in favour of prioritising party political loyalty and patronage.
The consequence is that the writ of central government simply does not run to local authorities, and has not for years.
In 2014, when Pravin Gordhan was minister of co-operative governance & traditional affairs, he launched an imaginative “back to basics” programme.
It was designed to “parachute” technical experts into struggling municipalities to tackle basic service delivery and governance failures. But many municipalities resisted interventions and, for political reasons, were rarely held accountable. There was not the political will or coherence to make the programme work or to sustain its successes.
Things have got worse. The auditor-general’s staff are routinely chased away from municipalities which refuse to be investigated and therefore to be accountable. No authority — not national government departments, not the police, not even the ANC itself — is able to stop the assassination of honest officials and whistleblowers.
Fear stalks the land.
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