Rolling blackouts put spotlight on municipalities

THE ROLLING blackouts and load shedding that now climbs up to Stage 6 have turned the spotlight on the capabilities of municipalities to cope and render services.

More often than not, the municipalities fall far short of expectations and fail to deliver, inviting the ire of residents who swiftly take to the streets in service delivery protests that often turn violent.

The recent axing of the Mangaung Metro Municipality’s executive mayor, Mxolisi Siyonzana, has again shone the torch on the deadwood that typically run these councils, much to the detriment of the core business – rendering a service to the ratepayers.

New broom at the governing ANC, secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, has become the bane of non-performing officials deployed by the organisation.

Siyonzana is the first casualty.

Miyelani Holeni, group chief adviser at Ntiyiso Consulting Group, holds that municipalities “have also been used in some places as a dumping ground for people who are deemed not to be performing in some places”.

Ntiyiso Consulting works in the area of advising municipalities on how to stay afloat.

A municipality must be run like a business, Holeni advises, “so that it is able to generate its own revenue”.

But income generation is the least of the competencies of the 257 municipalities across the country, staffed mainly by ANC deployees like Siyonzana, and where coalitions govern the egos of the political parties dictate terms.

The recent case of the Ditsobotla District Municipality, where the Patriotic Alliance mayor was elected in the morning and resigned hardly 24 hours later, is a case in point of the total shambles municipalities have become.

It is not unusual, according to Holeni, for just 33 of the total municipalities in the land to receive clean audits, “which means only 13% of South Africa’s municipalities are in full compliance with the relevant legislative requirements”.

“What we should be asking is why do municipalities fail, given the myriad legislation that exists within the local government space. Municipality failure should be rare, given the number of stakeholders who play a role within local government – from national, provincial to other independent parties, bodies, associations, funders and private-sector service providers,” Holeni says, repeating a point he has been at pains to put across to his clients.

But given the calibre of people at the helm, municipalities are still able to fail spectacularly at making services available to communities.

At their wits’ end, members of the community, the bulk of whom do not service their debt to these municipalities, will go out to blockade roads with rocks and burning tyres.

“Service delivery is not a favour that is being done for citizens. It is an imperative that must be a reality,” Holeni says.

Qondile Khedama, general manager of communications at the Mangaung Metro Municipality, says the provincial intervention did not yield the required results and outcomes “and four months into office of the new administration the national Cabinet then placed the Metro under national intervention in terms of Section 139(7)”.

According to Khedama, “our electricity entity, Centlec, has good relations with Eskom and is servicing the current account; anything related to debt is being managed in line with the plan by both entities”.

As with most municipalities, Mangaung is seized with the problem of ratepayers being unable to pay for services: “The increasing debt book is impacting on more provisions for bad debt due to increasing unemployment levels, inflation, and low economic growth within the municipal area, among others. The situation is worsened by the lengthy litigation process of recovering the long outstanding debt.”

While residents of Lehurutshe in Zeerust, in the North West, were out in their numbers protesting the scarcity of water in the Ramotshere Moiloa District, Khedama points out that Mangaung has the same problem: “High levels of water and electricity losses occur due to ageing infrastructure, illegal connections, and tampering with meters.”

The prognosis looks bleak. It does not seem that municipalities will turn the corner and appease the communities they serve.

The self-same communities, due to rising unemployment and other reasons, are unable to pay for the services they demand.

Khedama says: “Revenue collection is one of the city’s priorities, but it does have its own challenges given that we are still recovering from the effects of Covid-19 and the badly performing economy.

“Recent statistics have shown the rate of unemployment in the country, and that on its own has an impact on revenue collection. Most people cannot afford to pay rates and taxes, and our indigent register is growing daily, which has a negative impact on our finances and service delivery.

“Part of the mandate of the intervention team is the implementation of the Financial Recovery Plan, which remains a challenge. As the city we have deployed a revenue collection strategy that we have started rolling out. Among others, it is ensuring that we collect from both business and the provincial government, who are also main debtors.”