Special Assignment - 15 March 2005 - "Local Front" [Municipality issues]

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• published: 01 Sep 2015
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"The Local Front" In the past six months, residents of many towns have taken to the streets to protest lack of delivery, expressing their anger by burning tyres and smashing vehicles. They feel their lives have not changed for the better since 1994 and accuse local councillors of greed and corruption. So how true are these accusations? To find out, Special Assignment travelled to three municipalities in three different provinces. All of them exhibited one symptom that experts say is a feature of sick municipalities: too much of the budget is spent on salaries. We were told by one critic that many municipal managers take the maximum salary they can, regardless of qualifications or performance. Residents themselves are not blameless though. In each of the three areas we visited, residents owed millions to the municipality for services. It’s a “chicken-and-egg” situation. Are residents not paying because they are not getting services worth paying for? Or are municipalities not able to deliver because residents are not paying for the services they use? There were many other reasons for concern. In one of the municipalities we visited, some highly dubious business decisions have been made. These not only make the funding situation worse, but call into question the abilities of those in charge. Another municipality displayed a surprising lack of imagination: it could legitimately tap into a ready-made source of revenue, but no one has got round to organising it yet. Meanwhile, the potholes in the roads grow bigger and the lives of the poor do not improve. More than half the country’s 284 municipalities are on the brink of collapse, or battling to survive. The Umuziwabantu Municipality in the Harding area in KZN, the Mamusa Municipality near Schweitzer Reneke in the North West and Setsoto Municipality in the Ficksburg area are by no means the worst. But they reflect many of the problems cropping up in other parts of the country. If local government is the face of delivery, then from our investigation, it is clear that that face is in need of a serious lift. This revealing investigation is directed by Msizi Kuhlane and was filmed by Dudley Saunders.