Deadline for dysfunctional municipalities in South Africa
Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) Velenkosini Hlabisa has given South Africa’s 41 dysfunctional municipalities less than 24 months to return to ‘normalcy’.
Earlier this month, BusinessTech reported that 41 of the country’s 257 municipalities (~16%) are currently under administration, up from the 32 reported at the beginning of 2024.
According to its mandate, municipalities must effectively organise and execute their administration, budgeting, and planning to meet community needs and provide essential services like water and electricity.
If they fail to do so, provincial or national executives can intervene under section 139 of the Constitution and place them under administration.
Many of these are repeat offenders and/or have been placed under administration for a long time.
At the start of the seventh administration, President Cyril Ramaphosa emphasised how critically important functioning municipalities are, highlighting that failing municipalities significantly deter economic investment and affect job creation.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika following the report, Hlabisa said that along with intensified monitoring, his department is going to put timeframes for these municipalities under administration to “be out of the ICU.”
“I am very confident [that] by the time we go to the local government [elections] in 2026, which is 24 months from now, a lot of municipalities, if not all of them, will be out of being dysfunctional municipalities so that we start on a clean slate in the next local government,” said Hlabisa.
He said this can be possible through increased monitoring, and when there is a lack of cooperation, there must be “increased push measures.”
However, Hlabisa did not go into detail about what these “push measures” will be.
BusinessTech contacted CoGTA for clarity on these “push measures”; however, it could not get a response by the time of publication.
However, the minister said that CoGTA is reviewing all municipalities currently under administration, assessing the competencies of those deployed to assist them.
A clear turnaround plan must be established, and Hlabisa said that CoGTA will closely monitor its implementation, ensuring cooperation from the municipality and effective execution by the administrator.
“Municipalities cannot remain under administration indefinitely,” said the Minister.
Leadership crisis
In its recent presentation to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on CoGTA, the South African Local Government Association (Salga) said that the “local government is inadequately equipped to fulfil its developmental agenda” and manage its combined budget of R572.68 billion across 257 municipalities.
They further expressed concerns about the declining level of service delivery, instability, weakening capacity of municipalities, and the debt owed to municipalities that impinge on their performance.
According to Salga, there are four root causes for the “digression and decline” of the trajectory of the developmental impact of many local governments, being:
- Poor political leadership capacity and weak administrative management;
- Inefficient and non-integrated LG delivery mechanisms, systems and processes to enable service delivery;
- Ineffective utilisation of financial resources (poor financial administration) & inability to collect revenue, and insufficient fiscus allocation;
- Degenerating infrastructure and non-existent or poor services provided to local communities.
Salga recently said that current measures for managing and addressing corruption across South Africa’s 247 municipalities are woefully inadequate and need an urgent rethink.
Salga’s Working Group Chairperson for Electricity, Energy and Public Works, Thamsanqa Ngubane, said that they “are calling for professionalisation where municipal managers, CFO, engineers, technical managers will belong to a professional body which will then set the professional standard and code of ethics that if your performance is below the particular threshold, then you can be struck off the roll.”
Ngubane added that “we are borrowing this approach from the legal profession [and] as SALGA, we believe this is the only way that we can turn around the situation.”
In a recent response, Hlabisa urged municipal councils to adopt the new Code for Ethical Leadership in Local Government and submit their resolutions to the MECs responsible for local government.
Launched in March 2024, the code was developed through the Local Government Ethical Leadership Initiative (LGELI) in partnership with the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, the Ethics Institute, Salga, and the Moral Regeneration Movement.
“The code is a cornerstone of the Local Government Anti-Corruption Strategy, aiming to build a sector committed to ethical standards, service delivery, and good governance,” said Hlabisa.
“It addresses corruption head-on, ensuring incidents are dealt with swiftly and justly while embedding a professional culture of ethics within municipalities,” the statement read.
Unlike the code of conduct for councillors or municipal staff, the department said this one provides local government leaders with guidance on navigating key issues that impact ethical governance – which Salga said that the country’s municipalities are lacking.
It also applies to both the political and administrative municipal leaders.
“For the code to truly make a difference, it must become central to municipal discourse and be adopted by municipalities nationwide. Its principles must be consistently implemented by municipal leaders,” Hlabisa explained.
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