Don’t blame voters for our municipal mayhem

It has been said that the principal reason South Africa’s constitution confers such outsize power on the office of the president is that the negotiators had Nelson Mandela in mind when considering how best to resolve disputes about appointments at the highest levels of government.

Though our president is elected by parliament and not by the voters in a general election — much like a prime minister would be — we have given the role powers that would be more suited to someone directly elected by the people. This is most often how a president assumes office as head of state.

But in South Africa the president is simultaneously the head of state and head of the government, and has final authority over the appointments of the chief justices of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal. The president appoints the deputy president and the entire national executive, the heads of all chapter 9 institutions and the heads of other critical public institutions — from the governor of the Reserve Bank to the chiefs of the defence force, police and intelligence services.

As the former Constitutional Court deputy chief justice, Dikgang Moseneke, has put it, this seemed appropriate to the drafters of the constitution because of the prevailing view that “[president Mandela], after all, will do the right thing”.

Over the past two decades we have become increasingly aware of how glaring a miscalculation this was as we observed a series of diabolical appointments to institutions such as the National Prosecuting Authority, the South African Police Service, and the chapter 9 institutions, by presidents who had only political pliability in mind. This severely weakened and compromised their integrity and ability to function, and we are to this day trying to recover from the exercise of this unfettered presidential power.

Yet we seem not to have learnt our lesson. In the wake of the political game of thrones that has gripped South Africa’s metro municipalities since the 2021 local government elections, both the ANC and the DA are mooting amendments to local government legislation and regulations to “restore order” to the unstable coalitions over which they have presided. In essence, the two biggest political parties are proposing legislation to militate against their own inability to manage the members they have nominated to govern in the local sphere.

Just as we cannot write laws and confer powers on a particular office based on whoever happens to be the incumbent, we should not be fooled into believing that legislative amendments and regulatory changes will magically transform dysfunctional leaders into effective mayors, speakers, and MMCs — regardless of whether they govern alone or in coalition.

In September last year officials from the

National Treasury identified 151 out of 257 municipalities as “bankrupt and insolvent” due to rampant financial mismanagement. Of the 151, 43 municipalities are in crisis and “deemed to be beyond section 154 [of the Municipal Finance Management Act] support”. Instead, they “require a corrective mode of intervention to rescue them”.

The Treasury did not indicate how many of these are governed by coalitions, but I am willing to wager that number is close to zero. Only 66 councils in the country were left without a simple majority after the last local elections.

Coalition governments are not the only theatre of municipal government dysfunction — that catastrophe is more often than not presided over by political parties that command a council majority and need not negotiate with opposition parties over executive appointments, or budgets and bylaws.

Our municipalities are dysfunctional because they lack leadership, and so do the parties that hold power within them. Unless parties can develop the ability to introspect, change course and be ruthless about selecting the best and most ethical leaders to occupy high office on their behalf, no amount of intervention in the legislative framework will improve the parlous state of local government.

Last year, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on whether so-called “coalition instability” poses an existential threat to governance in our country. I asked the hundreds of delegates in the room to raise their hands if they had split their votes between two political parties on the ward and proportional representation ballots in the 2021 local elections. More than half the people in the room raised their hands.

Not giving power to any single party in the metro municipalities was not the chaotic act of a rebellious electorate. It was a calculated and rational decision by disillusioned voters who decided that none of the parties deserve absolute power and should be forced to work together. This was exactly the outcome they secured, and it is almost certain that they will secure it again in the provinces and at national level in 2024.

If political parties continue to elect and nominate leaders who lack the temperament, intellect and negotiating ability to make similarly rational decisions when forming governments and then delivering effectively, the fault lies not with the voters’ right to choose. Introspection and internal reform are what should be employed to turn around the crisis in local government, rather than legal interventions that dilute voters’ choices.