Remarks by President Cyril Ramaphosa at the South African Human Rights Commission National Conference on Local Governance, Capital Hotel, Sandton, 1 September 2022

Programme Director,

Chairperson of the South African Human Rights Commission, Professor Bongani Majola,

Deputy Chairperson of the SAHRC, Ms Fatima Chohan,

Commissioners,

Representatives from the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs,

Representatives of the South African Local Government Association,

Leaders and representatives of provincial local government associations,

Delegates,

Guests,

Colleagues and Friends,

Good Morning,

I wish to applaud the South African Human Rights Commission for convening this conference on accountability, service delivery and human rights in the local government sphere.

The SAHRC has taken up an issue that is the litmus test of our commitment to advancing, upholding and entrenching human rights in our society.

The Burkinabe revolutionary Amilcar Cabral famously said:

“Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.”

This sentiment, rooted in the concept of human dignity, guided the drafters of our Constitution and underpins our constitutional order.

One of the most progressive aspects of our Bill of Rights is that it guarantees not just political and cultural freedoms, but also socio-economic rights. As we drafted the Constitution, we saw that as an important departure from the ugly past the country has been dread through for more than 340 years.

It enjoins the state to achieve the progressive realisation of rights to healthcare, to education, to food and water, to housing and to social security.

It so happens that one of the foundational constitutional decisions or judgements that was made by the Constitutional Court right at the beginning revolve precisely around this.

It recognises the right of all to an environment that is not harmful to their health and well-being.

In many respects, local government is one of the most important custodians of the socio-economic rights of the South African people.

Efficient and affordable service delivery could mark the difference between leading a life of dignity, as promised by our Constitution, and a life of squalor, misery and deprivation.

When local government works – when basic services like water, sanitation, education, electrification and health care – are distributed efficiently and equitably, people’s quality of life is improved, businesses thrive and economies grow and the dignity of our people is assured.

When local government delivery fails, the impact is direct and devastating and it immediately has an overarching impact negatively on the lives of our people where they live.

It is therefore deeply disturbing that recent reports from the Auditor-General, National Treasury and COGTA show that the majority of our municipalities are failing.

The National Treasury classifies two thirds of South Africa’s 257 municipalities as being in financial distress, with only 41 receiving clean audits in the past financial year.

What this means is that many municipalities are unable to deliver basic services and are unable to build and upgrade clinics and hospitals, and fix roads.

Political contestations and infighting, lack of skills, failure to adhere to legislative prescripts, poor governance, lack of accountability, as well as what I would call super corruption are causing instability in municipalities and eroding the provision of services.

This is a crisis.

Continuing along the current trajectory is neither viable nor sustainable.

It undermines the constitutional promise of human dignity. It threatens economic growth and investment.

It is a threat to our constitutional order, because local government, is in many ways the most important sphere of government, because it operates where our people live, it operates where businesses invest and it operates in a sphere where basic human rights of our people needs to be actualised.

The rise in service delivery protests, many of which turn violent, are a barometer of public dissatisfaction with the non-delivery of services.

Now this also gets worse because it also extends to public servants. I just heard that we have public servants protesting for wage increases in the Eastern Cape in the Amathole District municipality.

What do they do, they go and break water installation as they are protesting for wages and now they go and destroy public infrastructure, which delivers water to the ordinary people of Amathole municipality.

The people of Amathole municipality are now going to protest themselves because they do not have service delivery and an act, which would have been caused by the very public servants who are meant to serve them.

Although the reasons for these protests are varied, social and economic dynamics, high unemployment and municipal governance issues all play a role.

We are categorical that no matter how legitimate the grievance, arson, looting, violence and damage to property can never be justified.

We are alive to the reality that failures at local government level are widening the trust deficit between government and the citizenry.

Unless these are remedied, we run the risk that the South African people become disillusioned with democracy itself.

It should at the same time be acknowledged that achieving financially viable and sustainable municipalities cannot be realised in an environment where non-payment for services, both by residents and businesses, has become entrenched.

One of the issues to which we hope this conference will give serious attention is assisting our municipalities to develop social compacts with residents to entrench a culture of payment for services.

By the same token, communities need to feel they have a vested interest in seeing their municipalities work. This will go a long way towards overcoming problems with the theft and vandalism of public infrastructure.

While good governance is a prerequisite for efficient local government, facilitating access of local communities to municipal decision-making is essential to participatory democracy.

The ideal municipality is accessible, provides opportunities for public engagement, and communicates in a manner that is considerate of local needs with respect to things like language and media platforms.

In an ideal municipality, customer care and feedback management systems are functional and implemented effectively.

In an ideal municipality, local government has regular outreach with communities on matters affecting development and consults other stakeholders, such as businesses, NGOs and community-based organisations.

Such cooperative relationships strengthen governance and contribute towards building capacity in communities.

Our foremost aspiration is for citizens to be partners in their own development.

The purpose of the District Development Model we introduced in 2019 is to integrate and coordinate planning, economic development and service provision at local government level.

It is about targeted development that takes the needs of local communities into account, determined through regular engagement and public participation.

During the course of this year I have held Presidential Izimbizo in North West, Free State, Mpumalanga and Gauteng.

During these engagements, I was reminded that community involvement is at the very heart of governance and that partnerships are essential to driving development.

Through the District Development Model, we are doing away with so-called ‘parachute development’, where projects are conceptualised in offices hundreds of kilometres away, and important factors like the creation of local jobs and local enterprise development are not prioritised.

We have seen the detrimental impact of ‘parachute development’ over the years, with important projects being stalled, subject to litigation and even sabotaged.

By applying an integrated approach, the District Development Model brings different spheres of government together with communities to plan for and implement programmes that result in development for the local community first and foremost.

Despite the significant challenges facing local government, the implementation of customised Municipal Support and Improvement Programmes by the Department of Cooperative Governance is yielding positive outcomes.

These programmes focus on putting people first, delivering services to the right quality and standard, and advancing good governance and sound financial management.

According to the latest State of Local Government Report, the number of stable municipalities has increased from 16 to 31 across the country, with KwaZulu-Natal registering the most improvements, followed by North West.

This is incremental progress that we must build on.

We work to overcome the systemic challenges facing local governance by mobilising support from sector departments using the District Development Model approach and by developing, implementing and monitoring Municipal Support and Intervention Plans.

We can also deploy multidisciplinary teams to support municipalities as KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and Western Cape have done.

The National Treasury and COGTA, in collaboration with SALGA, have also developed municipal Key Performance Indicators for local government that are being implemented by all municipalities.

The new Local Government: Municipal Systems Amendment Act is an important tool for improving the manner in which our municipalities function and for accountability.

Among other things, the Act disallows municipal officials from holding political office, defines competency criteria for the appointment of municipal managers and strengthens the framework for performance evaluation.

It is our expectation that this seminal conference will enable us to move beyond diagnosis to solutions and, beyond that, to implementation.

As the Constitutional Court said in a 1997 judgment:

“We live in a society in which there are great disparities in wealth. Millions of people are living in deplorable conditions and in great poverty. There is a high level of unemployment, inadequate social security, and many do not have access to clean water or to adequate health services. These conditions already existed when the Constitution was adopted, and a commitment to address them, and to transform our society into one in which there will be human dignity, freedom and equality, lies at the heart of our new constitutional order. For as long as these conditions continue to exist that aspiration will have a hollow ring.”

As we approach 30 years of democracy, the time for asking ourselves questions about the mismatch between aspiration and reality is over.

Our focus must be on what must be done.

I am finding that quite a number of key players in the municipal place, some of them be they mayors, and other officials are beginning to ask themselves that.

As they get into positions, they are beginning to see, to look at what needs to be done.

I talk of a municipal mayor, in one of our provinces, who on being appointed found that all the services in the municipality that he was meant to run have been outsourced to six key players and I think they call them the big six; everything had been outsourced to them. On a monthly basis, they were earning millions and millions of rands.

The people would be employed by the municipality to do many of those functions continued to be employed and largely doing nothing.

And as he looked very closely at what these contracts were all about that had been outsourced, he found that the municipality was being overcharged; in certain instances to up to 200%.

He went on to examine even the invoices and found that the overcharging was just enormous; where the municipality was supposed to pay twenty thousand rands it was paying two hundred rands every month.

And he is one of those that are scattered throughout our country who are beginning to change the trajectory of our municipalities and decided that those contracts will be re-examined and it need to be cancelled.

The municipality was taken to court a number of times and he has been able to ensure that the reduction of the costs that the municipality has been paying has been reduced by almost sixty to seventy percent; meaning that the rot that had set in in that municipality is now being turned around.

This conference, in my view, needs to focus on stuff like.

You have people from various non-governmental organisations who know what is happening in our municipalities and it is through the deliberations that should take place here that we should be able to get that wisdom professor that you were talking about.

The wisdom should come from those who are closest to what is happening at a municipal level.

In fulfilment of its mandate, the SAHRC has convened all stakeholders to deliberate on the work needed to improve the functioning of this critical sphere of government.

I would urge that you come up with learnings; come up with solutions, come up with proposals that we can propagate throughout the local government system as we as government continue to do the best from the legislative point of view as well as the executive point of view.

In doing so you will be able to add to what needs to be done. The work that is being done by this mayor I spoke about and many others who having taken up their positions are now beginning to turn local government around and beginning to look very introspectively at what has been done in the past.

That is where the trajectory of what we have done in the past needs to be looked at and needs to be changed.

Local government in our country needs a massive review.

We need to ensure that those that are deployed there recommit themselves to the values of our constitution; and those who get involved in maleficence and corruption are rooted out; and that local government accounts to our people of our country at a level at which local government functions.

This mayor informs me that with the number of changes that have now ensued that they have introduced, the people of that municipality willingly and happily come to public meetings that are held and public meetings are held regularly to report back on the progress the municipality is making to clean up and the people of the municipality are delighted and come up with a number of tales, stories, accounts of the toil and suffering that they had been going through.

He says they do not even need to be bussed in; they walk to meetings because they are so enthusiastic about what is happening at their local government space now.

It is this type of change that we want to see, it is this type of change that this conference should advocate and in many ways, it is this type of message that should come from this conference that will strengthen the hand of those who are key actors in the local government space.

In doing so you will be able to make a contribution as the SAHRC, which obviously you continue to do.

I want to end on applauding you as the SAHRC on the excellent focus that you have been showing. You did say Professor that one of the key areas you that you focus on is service deliver.

It is in this regard that we would want to continue to urging the SAHRC to continue with this work and from our side as government we will continue to support you much as you must also monitor us. You must continue examining precisely what we do as government.

Where we fail and fall short do speak out, do come up with your findings so that we can continue to correct our ways both at national, provincial and at local government level.

This is our shared responsibility to improve the lives of the people of our country and we are delighted that your commission is executing this task with the type of focus and commitment that you are showing.

I am sure that beyond this conference a number of ideas would have come through so that we are able to improve local government.

I will be addressing our mayors in a few days and the learnings from this conference I would like to look at closely, so that we can actually pass on some of the learnings from this conference to the mayors.

I am delighted that this time around, this year our focus on local government is intensifying - Intensifying to strengthen the hand of those who are doing the right thing; but also intensifying as to terrify those who are doing the wrong thing; to show them that we are going to have a radar focus on what happens in local government.

We have to change the trajectory of our local government so that we can deliver a better life to our people and leave no one behind.

I thank you.

Source: Government of South Africa