National Treasury ‘can’t cope’ with municipal dysfunction
Political squabbles have ruined many municipalities DG
Nearly two-thirds of SA’s 257 municipalities are in financial distress and require the assistance from National Treasury, and 43 of them meet the criteria to be placed under mandatory government intervention, says Treasury’s director-general, Dondo Mogajane.
“The challenges are just too many,” he said in reply to a question by ANC MP Nxololo Abraham at a parliamentary briefing on Treasury’s performance during the fourth quarter of the 2021/2022 fiscal year.
Mogajane’s response is perhaps the starkest assessment yet of the extent of local governments’ failure to deliver basic services and national government’s inability to deal with the crisis that has seen many towns and municipalities rendered dysfunctional.
Ratepayers bear the brunt of the financial malaise with numerous complaints of raw sewage in potholed streets and a lack of water and electricity. Residents in several municipalities have resorted to fixing the neglected infrastructure themselves.
“Only a handful of municipalities are performing,” Mogajane said. “If it’s about improvement in financial management and oversight ... we can do that but if the system of oversight and governance is not functioning in the whole of SA then the National Treasury cannot do it.”
Though municipal councils and oversight bodies were expected to hold senior officials accountable, this wasn’t happening because “politics is in the space, it is in your face in municipalities”, he said.
“The dysfunctionality in many municipalities is as a result of political squabbles,” and even instances of towns having two municipal managers.
“Until there is sanity about how politically these matters should be dealt with, the Treasury can try to do things on the margins but we will not cope,” Mogajane said, adding it wasn’t in Treasury’s sphere to get involved in political battles.
The long-term solution was for politicians to hold each other accountable on these matters, he said.
Mogajane’s sentiments echo those of finance minister Enoch Godongwana who said during the debate on his budAssistance get vote speech in parliament last week that the situation in municipalities was “bad”.
“We are faced with the formidable challenge of an increasing number of municipalities which are dysfunctional, either experiencing financial distress or even having deteriorated into crisis,” he said. for local government was being stepped up, Godongwana said, with the help of the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs.
Measures included direct interventions such as in Mangaung (Free State) and Enoch Mgijima (Eastern Cape).