New bill to regulate local government administration

With the South African Cabinet’s approval of the Municipal Systems Amendment Bill, which seeks to depoliticise municipal bureaucratic administration and to ensure that provincial and local governments appoint skilled people, the country may be moving back to a more professionalised and politically  independent civil service in line with the dictum of the separation of power. It is, however, at best a first step, and there is still some way to go.

Municipal administration has become notoriously prone to destabising changing of the guard come local government election time when the political control of councils change hands. It implies an acknowledgement by the government that the practice of so-called ANC cadre deployment had failed at local government level and should go a long way toward 'normalising' the situation before next year’s municipal elections, which by all indications could see an unprecedented number of councils changing hands.

According to the Cabinet spokesperson Themba Maseko, the bill provides for the establishment of uniform and consistent systems and procedures for municipalities. It will also prohibit political office bearers from being appointed to senior municipal jobs.

But the bill, which will be brought to parliament later this year, has also been criticised by the trade union movement and ANC ally Cosatu, who argues that it would discourage municipal workers from actively taking part in party politics. President Jacob Zuma also drew flak from trade unions earlier this year when he told ruling party supporters that the government would make it unlawful for politicians to hold senior municipal jobs.

Cosatu’s reaction is indicative of the democratically unsound, structurally embedded and entrenched conflict of interest that its formal membership of the governing alliance implies. There can hardly be proper separation power and a healthy balance of power between various stakeholders if key municipal management personnel are sometimes simultaneously accountable to a political party and to an elected council which is not necessarily controlled by their political party.

If and when labour disputes come into play, a third centre of accountability – a specific trade union and/or confederation such as Cosatu – could potentially further complicate their positions.

Briefing reporters, Maseko further said that the bill would ensure "the establishment of uniform systems and procedures for municipalities. The absence of common standards has created an untenable situation that made it possible for municipalities to adopt desperate human resources practices, remuneration and conditions of service."

Co-operative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka said the main intention of the bill was to ensure skilled people were appointed in local government. The intention was to ensure skilled people were appointed to top jobs, he said, and vowed to give service delivery a boost after next year's local government elections by ensuring that every municipality had a capable municipal manager, chief financial officer, town engineer, town planner, communications manager and human resources manager.

"We will retrain people after elections, politically and administratively, to ensure that the system is well oiled and can move forward," he said.

Emphasising that the uniform systems in the bill as approved by Cabinet will reverse an untenable situation, Maseko said: "Local government has been seriously harmed by political appointments to senior municipal positions. This is the first attempt at addressing problems arising from the African National Congress (ANC) policy of deploying party cadres to senior posts."

In some instances, deployments are based on party loyalties and not skill, adding to the problems of already underperforming municipalities.

The bill will not preclude members of political parties from holding municipal positions, but will forbid party office bearers such as branch chairpersons or secretaries from holding municipal posts.

If it were found that unskilled people had been appointed, then the MEC of the province in which the municipality fell would be required to intervene to ensure that a skilled appointment was made. If the MEC fails to do this, then the national minister would have to take action, said Minister Shiceka.

When the changes were first mooted in November last year by Deputy Co-operative Governance Minister Yunus Carrim, 27 municipal managers out of 283 were on suspension.

He said at the time that the envisaged legislative changes were also intended to prevent mayors and councils from firing or suspending municipal managers for flimsy reasons or to hamper investigations.

If passed by parliament, the new legislation will prevent municipal officials suspected of corruption from resigning one job and taking another in a different municipality. “If you are charged and, before your case is concluded, you resign, that resignation must not be accepted. The case must be taken to its conclusion,” said Carrim.

Anyone found guilty would be barred from working in government structures.

The bill further defines minimum qualifications and skills for the six most senior municipal officials and would make councillors who ignore the new standards personally liable for their actions.

The top positions covered in the bill are municipal manager, chief financial officer, town engineer, town planner, communications manager and human resources manager.

In another statement earlier in parliament, Minister Shiceka revealed that in eight of the nine provinces, there are companies under the control of public servants which do business with their respective governments. KwaZulu-Natal is the only exception. An auditor-general’s report revealed that thousands of public servants across national and provincial departments were doing business with the government at one level or another.