“Commonwealth Local Government Conference: Finding the Balance between Quality and Quantity in the Context of Huge Inequalities: The Case of South Africa”  

Yunus Carrim 
Deputy Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, South Africa

COMMONWEALTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT CONFERENCE PANEL ON: “South Africa: Delivering High Quality Services with Limited Resources: Public Sector Innovations at a Time of Global Recession” 
 
 
Cardiff, Wales, 15 – 18 March 2011 



Obviously like any government in a democracy we would like to deliver high quality services.  As a developing country, we have limited resources to deal with our huge inequalities, and so we have had to be constantly innovative. The global recession has not hit us as hard as other countries, but hit us it has. Over a million jobs were lost – of an economically active population of about 13 million – and there has been a significant decline in foreign direct investment. So we’ve had to be more innovative than ever. We’re making some headway, but we still have a long way to go. 
 
Obviously, high quality services are important. And these are, of course, meant to be delivered at local government level. But more than high quality services, our challenge has been to provide basic services to the poor and disadvantaged, who make up the vast majority of our country. In South Africa, we provide free basic services of water and electricity to the poor up to a particular limit. These services are provided primarily by local government, which gets funding from the national fiscus to do this. 
 
Our achievements in this regard are significant. Officials of our Department report: 
 


•    In 2001 75 % of our people had access to water. Today 93% do. 


•    In 1994  32 % of our people had access to electricity. Today 82% do. 


•    In 2001 60% of our people had access to basic sanitation. Today 70% do. 


•    In 2001 59% of our people had access to basic refuse removal. Today 69% do. 
Of course, these statistics do not tell us about the quality of the services. Nor about how consistently people receive them. We feel we need to do more. And the service delivery protests that break out in our country tell us that we simply have to! These protests have escalated in the past two years. In part they reflect the effects of the global recession, in particular job losses and increases in the cost of living. 
 


Currently, our unemployment rate is between 30 and 40%. Close to 27% of our people survive on social grants and a significant proportion depend on free basic services of water and electricity.  We simply cannot sustain this economically or financially. And the recession has served to make this even more glaringly obvious. So we have major challenges. But we refuse to budge from our view that in a civilized society people must have access to at least a minimum level of water, electricity, sanitation and refuse removal services. In fact, we plan to provide a free basic service of refuse removal to the poor in future as well.  
 
So what do we do? What, indeed, are we doing? In the first instance, we are moving away from a welfarist to a more developmental state approach. We have just shaped our New Growth Path which has at its core the creation of decent jobs through effective partnership between government, business and labour, and we have, in effect, declared this year as the year of a decisive commitment to job-creation.

The government has, through various means, allocated a substantial part of our budget for job-creation. 
  
Every Department in every sphere of government, and every section of business, labour and civil society is to be mobilized behind this new effort at job-creating economic growth. We are not naïve. The challenges are formidable. And we are determined to confront them. Of course, in a society with our divides, securing consensus is no easy task. But we want, at least, significant consensus – a consensus that is functional to achieving most of our key objectives. 
 
Improving local government services on a sustainable basis is not possible without a significant improvement in job-creating economic growth. This means that local economic development (LED) is more important than ever. As the New Growth Path evolves, LED needs to be given more attention, and national and provincial government have to give municipalities more support. As the National Ministry for local government we are keen to see an LED Advisory Council set up in every District municipality (which brings together several Local municipalities). Working with other stakeholders we also want to help to ensure that local business organisations, especially small businesses, but cooperatives also, are properly organised to benefit from and contribute to LED.    
 


We have also launched a “Business-Adopt-a-Municipality” programme to encourage businesses and state-owned enterprises to link with specific municipalities to assist them to operate more efficiently and more effectively deliver key services. After all, for business to prosper, there has to be the efficient delivery of such services as water, electricity, sanitation, refuse removal and roads.  
 
We launched in October 2009 the Local Government Turnaround Strategy to improve the performance of municipalities around the theme “Local Government is Everybody’s Business”. Right now before parliament we have a Bill that seeks to reduce the possibilities of jobs-for-political-pals and improve the prospects of professionalising the municipal administration. 
 
While the government recognises the importance of the private sector, we are not just relying on business for economic growth, and are spearheading a major infrastructure investment drive of some R810 (€72,2) billion.

Not only will this help with job-creation, but huge investments in water, electricity transport and ICT will contribute to improving and expanding services. The national government allocates, in fact, a specific grant, the Municipal Infrastructure Grant, for local government infrastructure. In order to accelerate infrastructure delivery, a Special Purpose Vehicle is to be created. It will assist municipalities with engineering and other technical skills, and, within limits, to raise money from the private sector. 
 
We are encouraging municipalities to have better debt-control and revenue raising strategies. We also launched “Operation Clean Audit 2014” aimed at ensuring that municipalities (and provinces) get unqualified audits by 2014. The better municipalities manage their funds, the more effective their service delivery will be.  
 


Among other issues that will contribute to improving service delivery are: 
 


•    A major review of the powers and functions of local, provincial and national government to facilitate more effective cooperative governance. 


•    A review of legislation passed since the first democratic elections of 1994 that has had the unintended consequence of impeding service delivery. 


•    A review of the Intergovernmental Fiscal system to direct more funds to local government. 


•    Reducing “red tape” for businesses and encouraging the growth of small businesses. 


•    The more frequent and effective use of the shared services approach. 


•    More effective procurement strategies. 


•    A better resourced and more empowered Ward Committee system with more active community participation. 


•    More effective role for Community Development Workers (CDWs) who link citizens with government departments in a supposedly more activist way.    
 


So this then for now! In 10 minutes I can’t say more. I hope it’s been of some use. 
 
Finally, if you want a copy of my speech, come to Cape Town or Pretoria! And while you’re there, you can visit the Drakensberg mountains in KwaZulu-Natal and the Kruger National Park in Mpumlanga. That’ll be your contribution to job creation and LED in the country that gave you Nelson Mandela! How about that?