Extract from a Speech in Reply to Premier's State of the Province Address

In the Premier’s speech with regards local government, not only was nothing new on offer for local government in our province, the Premier ignored it almost in total. Apart from mentioning a single local government system, the merger of the Kungwini, Nokeng tsa Taemane and Metsweding municipalities with the Tshwane metro as well as the Joburg billing crisis, the premier offered no insight into the future of local government in Gauteng.
I do however welcome the Premier’s acknowledgement that the Joburg billing crisis is indeed a “crisis” despite her colleague the Mayor refusing to acknowledge it as such. What I also missed is the detail on local government going forward with vision 2055. A number of questions hang in the air.

1. What happened to the two new cities that the ANC’s provincial secretary alluded to when he announced vision 2055?
2. What will the single local government system look like?
3. How will municipalities link into the Gauteng Spatial Development Framework?
4. What is the future of the Gauteng City Region and what will it look like?

The Premier had a golden opportunity to address the financial woes of municipalities as well as the lack of critical skills that hamper service delivery, probably the two biggest problems in local government today. However, she decided to focus only on what can best be described as election promises.
Once again I would like to repeat that we can solve the problems experienced by local government by doing three things, namely:

1. Restore proper financial management in our municipalities;
2. Appoint qualified officials in specialized posts; and
3. Eradicate external political influence to allow Mayors to make independent, transparent and accountable decisions in the best interest of their municipalities.

I believe that the main focal point of the department should be to restore service delivery by restoring proper financial management and controls in municipalities. Without money municipalities will not be able to deliver the services expected of them. We need skilled, professional career local government officials and not deployed cadres which leads to tender and other forms of corruption. We need people in positions that can do the work and as Cape town has proven, this can be achieved while empowering those previously disadvantaged South Africans.”