Unemployment numbers tell a sad tale of policy and governance shortcomings in municipalities

The recent unemployment numbers released by Statistics South Africa repeated a simple but heartbreaking message that has been with us for many years — we have a serious unemployment crisis that should never have been allowed to reach this level. 

Sadly, it is young people who are at the coalface of this crisis. Many have never worked a day in their lives. They have no disabilities or impairments, they are talented, have a good education, and they are hungry for success, but a climate has emerged where they cannot reach their full potential and they have become part of statistics that should shame us.  

A few years back, the people of Ditsobotla in North West were left high and dry when one of the biggest companies in the area decided to close down its local operation. The decision by Clover to leave Ditsobotla for a better municipal environment in KwaZulu-Natal followed years of complaints to the municipality regarding poor service delivery and its effect on business. 

These complaints fell on deaf ears and, sadly, the company was left with one option — to turn its back on Ditsobotla and plunge the small rural town and its people into a life of suffering after losing their jobs. School children also lost out on corporate social investment benefits associated with having a company like Clover operating close by. This is a town which already had socio-economic problems. 

A new sense of hope and optimism was ignited recently when President Cyril Ramaphosa dedicated what appeared to be more time than usual to local government and the need to deal with problems in this important sphere during his opening of parliament address. 

Local government is at the heart of service delivery in our country but the sector has been beset with endless problems that have had a huge bearing on the lives of millions of people, such as in the case of Ditsobotla. 

The auditor general’s 2021-2022 report into municipal performance points to a number of serious challenges that continue to beset local government. According to the report, for instance, the total number of municipalities with clean audit opinions decreased as many lost their clean audit status during the reporting period. 

What is also interesting, but deeply worrying, is that one province continued to lead the pack with the most municipalities with clean audit opinions — the Western Cape. This is the same province that seems to perform well where job creation is concerned, based on reports by Stats SA. 

We now know there is a correlation between good municipal governance and employment opportunities and the one thing we have to do as a country, if we are to make a dent in the unemployment crisis, is to increase the number of municipalities that are well governed. If we are to deal effectively with unemployment, poverty and, ultimately, inequality, we have to get all our provinces performing almost equally where opportunities are concerned. Industries are attracted to areas where service-delivery levels are acceptable.  

But what are the key problems that stubbornly continue to cripple the performance of the majority of municipalities in the country? In its presentation before parliament last year the Department of Cooperative Government identified a range of factors that can be grouped broadly into five categories: 

Politics — Many municipalities suffer from endless infighting that cripples their performance and leads to the collapse of service delivery. There are also intraparty struggles leading to instances where one municipality has two mayors (coming from the same party) causing administrative problems as officials have to contend with competing political instructions.

Governance — In some instances, municipal councils simply do not meet, either by design — or out of laziness and incompetence. When councils do not meet, decisions are not taken and budgets do not get allocated and spent. 

Financial management — The flouting of supply-chain process rules is one of the biggest challenges facing municipalities. This problem is flagged by the attorney general’s office in all of its reports. 

Administration — Most municipalities have very high vacancy rates, including key roles such as municipal managers, chief financial officers and technical staff. This, of course, paralyses operations and hampers service delivery.  

Service delivery — Most municipalities simply ignore complaints from residents and the growing number of so-called service delivery protests bears testimony to this. There are also challenges with the lack of technical capacity to manage functions such as maintenance of water systems and roads. 

Adding to this is the ever increasing number of informal settlements which makes infrastructure planning almost impossible and municipalities having to deal with an ever-increasing delivery backlog.         

As the auditor general’s office correctly asserts in its 2021-22 report “local government represents citizens across South Africa and carries the hopes and aspirations of communities to improve their lives and living conditions”. 

When Clover decided to pack-up and leave Ditsobotla, thousands of lives were turned upside down and many are unlikely to ever recover. 

Throughout the country, a number of small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) are forced to close down because of bad service-delivery from the municipalities where they operate. We can’t deal with the problem of unemployment and poverty when the SMMEs responsible for creating jobs remain handicapped by local government underperformance. This will bring all of us down and the numbers bear testimony to this.    

One of the indicators for the successes of the government of national unity will be improvement in the performance of local government and the GNU, in conjunction with provincial governments, will need to develop a healthy appetite for intervention when things go wrong in municipalities. 

The past few years have been marked by a tendency to turn a blind eye when things went wrong in various municipalities across the country because of political and factional considerations. There has been a cost to this as evidenced by the unemployment numbers, among others, and we cannot afford to continue with this “see no evil, hear no evil” mindset if we are to improve the situation in this critical area. 

Whatever interventions are pursued have to be within the provisions of the law, and there are enough legal avenues provided by the law to do this, including placing municipalities under administration. Governance problems should not be allowed to grow and fester to a point where everything within the municipality collapses.  

Fidel Hadebe is a former government communication official.