When Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Pravin Gordhan first introduced the Back to Basics Strategy in September last year, he made a careful observation.
He said while local government was working well, to a large extent, officials needed to go back to improving the customer experience of the recipients of basic services, as well as improve administration. This marked the birth of the Back to Basics approach. A year later, Minister Gordhan tells Amukelani Chauke that the strategy is working.
For Minister Gordhan, getting the basics right was important if this sphere of government was to get the bigger things right, like receiving clean audits and spending money wisely.
According to him, in a caring government, officials at the local sphere listen to citizens, hold committee meetings more regularly and ensure that in every municipality, traffic lights are working, potholes are filled, water is delivered, refuse is collected, electricity is supplied, and waste management takes place.
It has been a year ever since the Back to Basics Strategy was introduced, and while it is still a bit too early to assess the impact of the strategy on local government, results are starting to show.
When President Jacob Zuma delivered his State of the Nation Address in June last year, shortly after his inauguration, he mentioned that while there has been many success stories in many municipalities, the executive and public servants alike wanted to make the people’s experience of local government a pleasant one.
A few months later, in September, Minister Gordhan announced that a rapid assessment on the state of local government had been conducted.
The assessment covered several areas of delivery – from political stability, governance, and service delivery to institutional management, community satisfaction and financial management.
The department, in response to the assessment, started a process of setting benchmarks for all municipalities to embrace a culture of performing their basic responsibilities without fail.
With that done, the Back to Basics strategy was born.
Responding to immediate challenges
First on call for Minister Gordhan was doing an audit of all municipalities to determine which ones needed immediate support and what needed to be done to help the rest work better than before.
While some were found to fall under the category of “dysfunctional”, others were categorised under “doing well” and “potential to do well”.
Minister Gordhan says after the inception of the strategy, a lot of strides have been made.
The aim, he said, was to focus on getting the basics in municipal services right in the short to medium term.
“While the B2B approach has had significant successes, it has not yet had sufficient impact in terms of citizens’ experience of local government,” he says.
He says in a space of 10 months, a dual approach was followed to roll-out the strategy.
This included a multidisciplinary and interdepartmental teams doing work in most municipalities by focusing on developing municipal action plans and providing hands-on support in areas such as Financial Management and Human Resources. Most of the municipalities have adopted these action plans. The Minister also undertook unannounced visits in selected municipalities resulting in part in the development of support and good governance packages. Such visits, for example, occurred in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, Makana Local Municipality, Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality and Mogalakwena and Oudtshoorn Local Municipalities.
The result of this is that the municipal monthly reporting system is starting to take shape, with an average of 181 municipalities now reporting against Back to Basics indicators on a monthly basis.
Cooperative governance has been strengthened, and provincial CoGTA coordination of support to municipalities has improved vastly.
Basics phase one: the achievements
Several trends have emerged ever since the Back to Basics strategy was implemented.
The minister said the six months report of the Back to Basics pillar showed that progress was being made in the main pillars of the programme.
When it comes to putting the people first, reports show that interaction between the people and municipalities was taking place.
“All ward committees are in place and the monthly reporting information shows that most reporting municipalities held ward committee meetings more often than quarterly,” Minister Gordhan says.
He also said that between 70% and 80% of all reporting municipalities indicated that they have a Complaints Management System in place.
Progress has also been made to improve service delivery.
An independent survey done on South Africa by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development (OECD), which was released in July 2015, found that “since 1994 South Africa has made great progress in reducing absolute poverty by rolling out social grants for pensioners, the disabled and children.
“Access to education, housing, water, electricity and other services has been greatly broadened. As a result, well-being has increased substantially.”
The Minister says that reporting municipalities have been responding to service delivery failures and that the department is working with the sector departments to set norms and standards in this regard.
He said with regards to electricity outages, nationally just over 40% of all electricity outages have been solved in reporting municipalities in less than three hours.
Just over 30% of sewerage spillages have been addressed in “less than 3 hours” in reporting municipalities, the minister says.
“With reference to the delivery for Free Basic Services, some 4.9 million households in reporting municipalities received Free Basic Water each month. Some 1.7 million households in reporting municipalities received Free Basic Electricity each month,” he says.
Minister Gordhan notes that a culture of good governancewas also being entrenched at municipalities.
Of all council meetings held, 85% of reporting municipalities met the legal requirement of one council meeting every quarter.
Traditional Leaders are participating in council meetings, and of the 236 municipalities that reported at least once in the six months, 108 had traditional leaders within their jurisdiction and serving on their Council in an ex officio capacity.
About 571 traditional leaders served on these 108 councils.
“With reference to dismissals for fraud and corruption, over the six month period 150 persons were dismissed from the reporting municipalities as a result of fraud and corruption,” he says.
When it came to sound financial management, Minister Gordhan said Back to Basics interventions will build on the positive trajectory in financial management that was seen when Auditor General Kimi Makwetu released the outcomes of the 2013/ 14 municipal audits.
He said the Back to Basics financial monitoring tool that is being implemented provides for dedicated support to municipalities receiving disclaimers.
The minister also said municipalities were addressing skills and capacity challenges.
An average of 84% of reporting municipalities had filled positions of municipal manager (average vacancy rate of 16%). On average only 80.9% of Chief Financial Officer positions had been filled each month (average vacancy rate of 19%). In terms of Section 56 vacancies, on average 83,59% such positions have been filled in the reporting municipalities over the six month (average vacancy rate of 16%.).
Minister Gordhan says from the work done to date, the department has identified key problems across the local sphere.
“In the next phase of B2B, a more precise and practical approach regarding the actions which will be effective in changing the way municipalities are working, is needed.
“Through this approach it will be possible to register measurable improvements in citizens’ experience of local government,” he says. – SAnews.gov.za
