Thabo Mbeki.
July 2020.
The ANC issued a statement after the June 2020 meeting of its National Executive Committee (NEC) which said, among others:
“The NEC supports the initiative by Officials and the NWC, to engage in the development of proposals on a synchronized national, provincial and local government elections to enable better coordination and implementation of policies across spheres of government.”
To confirm and explain this position ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule said:
“Indeed, we are calling for synchronised elections, one single elections (sic) by all spheres and we are saying that obviously it will need the amendment of the Constitution and if we have to amend the Constitution, we will engage other parties.”
Indeed the Secretary General was correct when he said the new proposed arrangement to hold the national, provincial and local elections on the same day would require a Constitutional amendment.
This immediately suggests that this is an important matter in terms of our governance processes.
Naturally therefore it will be important for the ANC leadership to explain not only to its members but to the country as a whole as to why it is necessary to make the proposed change in our electoral processes.
Here we will try to examine this matter from the perspective of the historical positions of the ANC.
Two of the important statements contained in the Freedom Charter say:
“No government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the People”; and,
“The People Shall Govern”!
During the years preceding the negotiations which started in 1990, many supporters of the National Party questioned us about the meaning of these assertions.
They insisted that they understood that when we said ‘the people shall govern’, in fact we meant ‘the ANC shall govern’!
Of course we explained to them, repeatedly, that the pursuit of the objective to ensure that the people shall govern was fundamental to the very nature of the ANC as a revolutionary democratic movement. It was a matter of strategic and not tactical importance.
Accordingly as we entered into the CODESA and later negotiations, including the post-1994 Constitutional Assembly, the ANC constantly sought to help elaborate a Constitution which would best enable the people to govern!
The ANC has openly admitted that many things have gone wrong with the movement itself during the years it has served as our country’s governing party. For instance the Resolution on Organisational Renewal it adopted at its December 2017 54th National Conference inter alia said that there had developed among the people:
“A loss of confidence in the ANC because of social distance, corruption, nepotism, arrogance, elitism, factionalism, manipulating organisational principles, abusing state power, putting self interest above the people. Even the strongest ANC supporters agree that the “sins of incumbency” are deeply entrenched.”
The Conference therefore resolved that it was imperative that the ANC should go through a process of renewal, saying:
“Organisational renewal therefore is an absolute and urgent priority, and we may go as far as to say, to the survival of our great movement.”
It is obvious that the degeneration of the ANC as characterised at the 54th National Conference meant, among other things, that over time, especially the leadership had turned its back on the fundamental and historic principles, values and practices of the movement.
This would include understanding of, and loyalty to the principle that the people shall govern, based on the fundamental revolutionary democratic principle to develop the people to be their own liberators.
In 1992 the ANC adopted the important document, ‘Ready to Govern’ (R2G) which contained many of the basic policy guidelines which informed many of the Government programmes implemented from 1994.
Among the matters discussed in R2G is “A New Approach to Policing”. That new approach says:
“Policing shall be based on community support and participation…Policing priorities shall be determined in consultation with the communities they serve…Policing shall be structured as a non-militarised service function…Policing shall be subject to public scrutiny and open debate…”
The ANC took this posture because the apartheid regime had used the South African Police (SAP) as its principal instrument of repression. The police therefore stood out as an enemy of the people. Obviously during the democratic period the formerly black oppressed would never believe that this police force would genuinely work for their safety and security.
Recognising the fact that nevertheless the new democracy would require policing, the ANC understood that the police formation itself had to be transformed. That is why, among other things, R2G said that instead of a Police Force we should have a Police Service which, in addition, must be non-militarised.
Indeed after 1994 we constituted a South African Police Service (SAPS), with all the officers having civilian, non-military ranks, starting with the officer-in-charge of the Service, the National Commissioner, working as part of a Ministry and Department of Safety and Security!
Much of this changed in 2010 when the then ANC Administration restored the military ranks of the police and changed the Ministry and Department of Safety and Security to the present Ministry and Department of Police.
All this showed that the then ANC leadership either did not understand the reasoning within the movement which had resulted in the change from the SAP to the SAPS etc, or viewed that reasoning with contempt, and therefore abruptly repositioned the police as an instrument of repression, led by Generals etc, like the apartheid SAP! The police massacre of mineworkers at Marikana in 2012 cannot be separated from that 2010 remilitarisation of the police.
Recognising the importance of this matter, the National Development Plan (NDP) made a specific recommendation to “demilitarise the police”. It says:
“The decision to demilitarise the police force, moving away from its history of brutality, was a goal of transformation after 1994. The remilitarisation of the police in recent years has not garnered greater community respect for police officers, nor has it secured higher conviction rates. Certainly, a paramilitary police force does not augur well for a modern democracy and a capable developmental state. The Commission believes that the police should be demilitarised…”
Nothing has been done to implement this important recommendation!
The 2010 radical departure from the policies on policing contained in R2G exemplified exactly the abandonment of ANC values and principles which the 54th ANC National Conference condemned.
Whereas these values and principles in R2G were the outcome of an inclusive and vigorous discussion within the ANC and the broad democratic movement, the 2010 regression was an imposition by the ANC leadership in Government, with no inclusive and systematic discussion by the ANC as a whole. This also showed the extent to which the ANC leadership in the Government National Executive had also developed disrespect for the normal policy formation processes in the ANC.
We mentioned R2G because this same document also deals with the issue of the electoral system about which the June 2020 meeting of the ANC NEC took some decisions.
As we return to this matter, we also come back to the important value and principle encapsulated in the perspective – the people shall govern!
In November 1996, the ANC distributed a Discussion Document entitled ‘The State and Social Transformation’. The document includes this important paragraph:
“The empowerment of the people to participate in the process of governance, expressed in the concepts of a people-centred society and people-driven processes of transformation, indicates the centrality of the concept of popular and participatory democracy to the democratic movement’s understanding of the functioning of a democratic state. It shows the commitment of this movement to the proclamation in the Freedom Charter that ‘The People Shall Govern!” It is the process of the people becoming their own governors.”
R2G devotes a good deal of space to a discussion specifically about ‘A New System of Local Government’, and starts by saying:
“The ANC believes that there is need for strong and effective local government to replace the racist, sexist, undemocratic, tribalist and corrupt structures which presently exist.”
The ANC document prepared for discussion in Theme Committee 3 (Provincial and Local Government) of the 1994-96 Constitutional Assembly said about local government:
“This is the level of government charged with the actual implementation of the RDP to ensure the transformation of society. Hence, the task of local government is to ensure that all residents have equal access, free of any form of discrimination to basic services. Local government shall contribute actively towards the redistribution of resources on the basis of race, class and gender.”
Given this strategic goal visualised for local government, it was inevitable that the ANC would return to the important matter of how the fundamental principle – the people shall govern – should relate to this critical sphere of government!
R2G made what might appear to be a routine statement, that:
“Local government will bring government closer to the people…”
But to emphasise the importance of this reality, R2G went on to say:
“Local government will…actively involve (the people) in decision-making and planning processes which affect them… Democratic local government means more than just having the right to vote in a local election. It also includes facilitating the creation of a strong, independent civil society, a high degree of accountability, transparency and the right to participate in decision-making processes which affect communities between elections.
“Participation and accountability are meaningless if people do not have access to information. The public disclosure of all information pertaining to any policy, decision or activity for which any local authority is responsible should be guaranteed. In particular, meetings of the local government council and of council sub-committees should in principle be open to the public.”
When R2G discusses the national and provincial (regional) governments it does not include this specific matter of ‘involving the people in decision making’.
However we should note that the ANC document prepared for discussion in the Constitutional Assembly, to which we have referred, reiterates a broad objective enunciated in R2G concerning the objective that the people shall govern, and says:
“…The ANC confirms that participatory democracy and mechanisms to give effect thereto are vital to democracy in South Africa, and that civil society and its various organisations have a crucial role in democratising and transforming South Africa. The final constitution, supplemented where necessary by national legislation, should provide for the principles and appropriate/effective mechanisms of participatory democracy, as well as for organs of civil society.”
As we would expect, R2G argued for an electoral system based on the principle of one-person-one-vote and argued for a proportional system of distribution of seats in our legislatures. Of interest it already foresaw that there might be need to elaborate a specific electoral system for local government.
Accordingly it said that “proportional representation may be supplemented by the other democratic electoral systems at local level.”
Further elaborating this view, the 1995 ANC document prepared for the Constitutional Assembly proposed what was ultimately decided that:
“The electoral system for local government must be democratic. It may include both proportional representation as well as ward representation…”
It is quite obvious that despite the strategic posture the ANC adopted towards local government as a constitutionally mandated third sphere of government, with its vital role in terms of the ‘implementation of the RDP’, not enough was done by successive ANC Administrations to empower local government to carry out its projected tasks.
One of the problems emerged from Day 1, as it were. It is clear that the democratic electoral process since 1994 has resulted in a particular pattern of distribution of the ANC cadres with regard to the system of governance in our country.
The reality is that the most senior cadres have been deployed to serve in the principal executive, legislative and administrative positions in national government. The next layer of leadership in terms of seniority has gone into the rather expansive sphere of provincial government, given that we have nine provinces. Consistently therefore, for a quarter-of-a-century, as the ANC we have deployed into local government the third layer of our leadership corps.
The role the ANC projected for local government as early as in the R2G document suggested that it should have split its most senior cadres between the national and local spheres of government. This was not done.
The other challenge is that the fiscal system in place since 1994 has allocated the smallest share of the national revenues to local government. This system has also required local government to rely on its own possibilities to raise additional revenues from each municipal area, to a greater extent than has been required of provincial government.
The reality is that essentially only the historically white areas of our country had the possibility to generate meaningful revenue streams likely to be of some help with regard to helping provide the municipal governments with some of the resources they need. To the contrary it was obvious that the historically black areas, on their own, would have virtually no possibility to host such revenue streams.
Accordingly the real narrative during the years of democracy is that the deployment of the human and financial resources to local government by the ANC was not consonant with its vision of the strategic role it assigned to local government.
By the end of the first five years of democratic rule, the ANC began to acknowledge the mistake it had made in terms of the deployment of its cadres among the three spheres of government. The result of this was that the country started to see more senior ANC cadres taking leading positions in local government.
After Ambi Masondo lost the race to become Premier of Gauteng in 2000, he became the ANC candidate for the position of Mayor of the Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality and was elected to that position. Duma Nkosi was withdrawn from the National Assembly where he chaired one of the Portfolio Committees and became Mayor of the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality in 2001.
Nevertheless it is true that as the ANC we did not pursue this process with the necessary determination. The longer this deficiency persisted the greater the damage that was done to local government.
As President of the Republic I addressed a session of the NCOP meeting in Limpopo on 4 November, 2005. During this address I mentioned some of the problems afflicting local government. Among other things I said:
“(The) unseemly scramble for political power in municipal government appears to be driven by the desire to abuse elected positions to lay hands on the economic resources that the local authorities have the possibility to access.
“This includes the power of members of municipal executive authorities to determine the outcomes of municipal tendering processes, regardless of the fact that the Municipal Finance Management Act expressly prohibits the involvement of councillors and mayors in adjudicating bids for municipal tenders…
“As I have already indicated, we need “municipalities that serve all our people and have the requisite capacity to provide regular and reliable services to citizens as well as being at the forefront of the reconstruction and development of our country”.
“We cannot build such a system of municipal government by electing councillors driven by criminally selfish motives, who have absolutely no interest in serving the people and who do not belong among those determined to occupy the forward trenches in the difficult and complex struggle for the reconstruction and development of our country, focused on the achievement of the goal of a better life for all.”
Many years after this speech, the Auditor General issued his report about Municipal Finances covering the period 2018 – 2019. The Report said:
“Those that are required to supervise and monitor adherence to fiscal management laws are not doing so or are not effective in the steps they have taken so far. The money allocated to the delivery of certain specified outcomes is no longer in the bank and that for which it was earmarked has not been delivered or achieved. There is not much to go around, yet the right hands are not at the till…
“When looking across the board and after carefully analysing the financial statements we audited, we can safely conclude that local government does have sufficient money and assets to fulfil most of the basic needs and aspirations of its citizens. But a lot of work is needed to make sure that this is realised. Proper administration and superintendence over the financial affairs of local government were not exercised and were found, through this audit examination, to be seriously lacking with some devastating consequences already evident in certain identified areas…
“The financial statements of a municipality tell the story of how well a municipality is managed…The tale most often told in local government, however, is of municipalities crippled by debt and being unable to pay for water and electricity; inaccurate and lacklustre revenue collection; expenditure that is unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful; and a high dependence on grants and assistance from national government.”
How bad the situation is in our municipalities is reflected in the fact that the 2018/19 AG’s Report says that:
- in two of our Provinces, Free State and North West, none (0) of the municipalities got a clean audit;
- in five of these Provinces, the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, KZN, Limpopo and Northern Cape, only one (1) in each of these got a clean audit;
- in one of the Provinces, Mpumalanga, two (2) municipalities got a clean audit; and,
- in one of the Provinces, the Western Cape, thirteen (13) municipalities got a clean audit.
This amounts to 20 out of the 278 metropolitan, district and local municipalities in our country!
Of course we all know the “devastating consequences” the Auditor General wrote about. They have been communicated for many years now by the persisting ‘service delivery’ protests!
We must not forget what we said earlier about the principled position the ANC had taken that it was exactly in the sphere of local government that we would ensure that indeed the people govern!
Indeed in its 2006 Local Government Election Manifesto the ANC said:
“Already we have put in place democratic institutions like Ward Committees and instituted participatory planning processes so that you can have a say in local social and economic development. Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) must rest on widespread consultation with the community. We are determined to strengthen popular forums to build an inclusive and truly developmental system of local government.”
In 2009 two scholars, Laurence Piper and Roger Deacon, published a study of precisely the Ward Committees the ANC spoke about. The study was entitled, ”Too dependent to participate: ward committees and local democratisation in South Africa.”
The authors wrote:
“Will participatory local government structures help deepen democracy in South Africa? That is the proclaimed purpose of the ward committee system, the centrepiece of post-apartheid local government reform, intended to facilitate deliberative democratic decision making.”…
Having conducted a detailed study of the Msunduzi Municipality in KZN, these authors wrote:
“(There was) the possibility that instead of deepening democracy, ward committees could conceivably either succumb entirely to partisan party-political agendas, or – which may be the same thing – be used to deflect and defuse popular discontent. As it turns out, on the available evidence, both alternatives proved to be implausible. Disappointing their promoters and confounding their critics in equal measure, Msunduzi ward committees are just ineffectual…
“In Msunduzi, between a third and a half of all ward committees are not functioning properly, if at all. They are dominated by councillors and political parties rather than by the community as a whole, and neglected by the municipality. These are good reasons to be sceptical about the democratic dividend that the ward committee system is likely to yield anywhere in South Africa.”
It is very clear that during the last two decades we as the ANC have failed to realise the strategic objectives we set for local government as originally detailed in the ‘Ready to Govern’ document.
Instead of the vibrant system of local government which would be characterised and driven by popular participation, genuinely serving the interests of the people and making a decisive contribution to the reconstruction and development of our country, we have an important sphere of government which in the majority of cases has been and continues to be in crisis.
However it is also true that the thirty-year-old policy of the ANC on local government has not changed. And indeed there is every reason to argue that there is absolutely no need to move away from the objectives to ensure that:
- local government, being closest to the people, functions in such a manner that it gives expression to the principle that the people shall govern;
- it functions efficiently to address the basic needs of the people, with no corrupt diversion of public resources for the enrichment of some individuals; and,
- it makes a significant contribution to the task of the reconstruction and development of our country, to help eradicate our colonial and apartheid legacy.
As the ANC pursues the objective of renewal, as directed by the 2017 54th National Conference, it must undertake a serious assessment of why it has essentially failed to achieve its objectives with regard to Local Government.
That assessment must help the ANC to answer the question – what should be done to reconstruct the Local Government sphere of our governance system so that it reflects the vision and values reflected in R2G, the Constitution and legislation?
This process, leading to the reconstruction of local government, cannot start with the decision taken by the ANC NEC to “synchronise” the elections such that the national, provincial and local elections are held on the same day!
For one thing this would mean that the ANC, and of course all other parties contesting the elections, would present to the electorate one Election Manifesto. It is obvious that in this situation national issues would take precedence, effectively marginalising matters which relate specifically to local government, contrary to the requirement to respect the particular role for this sphere of government as visualised in R2G etc.!
This would entrench processes according to which practically local government would not be given the special focus it needs. Necessarily this would ‘legalise’ the counter-productive neglect which the ANC itself has visited on local government for two decades!
In this context the scholars we have cited, Piper and Deacon, have written:
“As former President Thabo Mbeki (in Vanderhaegen, 2005) admitted in the Local Government Bargaining Council Sector Summit, ‘the primary focus has been on national government as ”absolutely important”, provincial government as “important” and local government as ”well, it exists”’.
As the country must move away from this position, the ANC NEC must review the decision it has taken to “synchronise” the elections.
ANC SG Ace Magashule was interviewed by the TV channel Newsroom Africa on 7 July, 2020. He was asked why the ANC wanted to ‘synchronise’ the elections. He explained that:
- “it’s saving the costs, it’s saving the time”;
- “we want a seamless governance”, with each sphere elected at the same time, and each for five years; and,
- if the Auditor General submitted the audits for all the spheres of government at the same time, this would “assist us to understand and run government properly, efficiently and actually try and understand how to assist the local sphere.”
He went on to say that by taking the decision to ‘synchronise’ the elections, the ANC was “creating a dialogue in society”, and “I’m sure other parties are also actually saying it makes sense…EFF is saying let’s go for a single election also, synchronised.”
He also explained that during the debate that had been going on in the ANC, some had argued in favour of the view that the fact of staggered elections has helped “to keep (the ANC) on its toes”, to encourage it “to keep in contact with the people”, and not to “use people as voting robots”.
However the view prevailed that we should have ‘synchronised’ rather than staggered elections.
It is important to note that none of the proposals advanced during the debate mentioned by the ANC SG engaged the vital issue we have been discussing of the strategic role of local government as explained in R2G.
It is obvious that the core of the winning argument about an eminently political matter was administrative rather than political! It was also based on what is clearly a strange understanding of what is needed to achieve “seamless governance”!
It is important that the ANC NEC must recall the positions explained in R2G properly to guide itself, its membership, its Allies and the rest of the democratic movement about what should be done to ensure that the masses of our people are served by an effective, accessible and accountable system of local government.
In this context the ANC must pay due attention to such Constitutional requirements relating to local government that it must:
- “ensure the provision of services to communities in a sustainable manner…and,
- “encourage the involvement of communities and community organisations in the matters of local government.”
To repeat what was said earlier in this document, citing R2G:
“The ANC believes that there is need for strong and effective local government to replace the racist, sexist, undemocratic, tribalist and corrupt structures…
“Local government will…actively involve (the people) in decision-making and planning processes which affect them… Democratic local government means more than just having the right to vote in a local election. It also includes facilitating the creation of a strong, independent civil society, a high degree of accountability, transparency and the right to participate in decision-making processes which affect communities between elections.”
The Covid-19 pandemic has further exposed the structural faults in our country and society, the legacy of colonialism and apartheid we have not succeeded to eradicate during the quarter-of-a-century of democratic rule.
Surely, what all of us have seen in terms of its impact both in our teeming black urban townships and in our rural villages could not but bring forcefully to the fore the critical importance of the kind of local government R2G spoke about!
Accordingly when we say that a post-Covid-19 South Africa must be radically different from what it was before the arrival of the coronavirus on our shores, this must also mean that the sphere of government closest to the people, local government, must also be radically different from what it has been for two decades!
ends