City Administration

Zinhle Sokhela:  PCB Director

Not long ago in a meeting attended by the leaders of the Municipal administration team and a local rate-payers association, one of the representatives of the latter remarked that the administrators had not done enough to address the city’s problems.   He then suggested that one of the administrators “didn’t know what he was talking about”.    To say that these remarks raised the ire of the administrators is an understatement.    I suggest that if our executive officials had worked as hard as the members of this administration team have done, we might not have reached the point of crisis at all.   It is never easy to correct other peoples’ errors and what Johan Mettler and his people have found is that these errors have run a lot deeper than anyone suspected.  The errors were committed in respect of legal compliance, rank disregard for proper accountability, inefficiency and personal greed resulting in manipulation and corruption.    But for the expertise of the administrators, many of them would have gone unnoticed, for compliance with the legislation as it relates to local government is complex and very demanding; so demanding, in fact, that it defies reason in some instances.  In its efforts to ensure that municipalities are controlled and accountable, government has introduced so many rules that more time has to be spent on complying than delivering.   In some cases, the rules actually prohibit the undertaking of projects and arrangements that would facilitate delivery.   Such unintended consequences are inevitable when laws are made to prevent abuse rather than enable progress. 

We who live in the city would like to see progress, for there has been virtually none since 2006.   We have to understand, however, that the task of the administrators is to rescue the city in the first instance, and this means that its governance and administration must be brought into line with what is expected in terms of the law.     A new foundation has had to be built before development and progress can be encouraged.    Unfortunately, it will take some time to rebuild the foundation.   As a result of statements made by the former Municipal Manager, for example, and other officials, no one was aware of the depth of the city’s financial woes.    Technically bankrupt, or very close to it, the city has not had sufficient money for at least the past six months to pay all its creditors.   We find it difficult to imagine that government would suffer bankruptcy; we have this notion that there is always more available.    Well, because of the mismanagement of municipalities, government has taken a hard line, refusing to bail them out and expecting them to resolve their own difficulties.

In our case, fingers may be pointed at wasteful expenditure and this has certainly occurred, but the size of the amount squandered in this way doesn’t come close to the amount that the Municipality is owed by rate-payers and service consumers.    By the end of June, the end of the Municipality’s financial year, the outstanding debt amounted to more than R600 million.   People from all sectors, including government itself, owed huge amounts in rates and for electricity and water services.    While some of the money owed by government departments was attributable to both provincial and national departments, a good deal was owed by schools which are classified as government even though they are responsible for paying their own way in terms of the funding protocol.   The Education Department claims that it has provided the money, but that the schools have spent it on other things and ignored the costs of electricity and water.    One has to have sympathy for some schools where members of the community have stolen the water, and perhaps the electricity too, from schools which have then been left with the bill.   Nothing is for nothing, and the sooner South Africans realise this, the better.    The delivery of these and other basic services costs money, and someone has to foot the bill. 

From the Chamber’s point of view, therefore, the harsher and more aggressive debt recovery policy of the city’s administrators is wholeheartedly supported.    Without intervention, the signs were that the total debt for the new financial year would amount to over R750 million.    To put this into some perspective, one tenth of this amount would be just about enough to maintain all the city’s roads for a year.   Imagine how much better the city could be if this money were available.

Leave a Comment