Gauteng’s glory days are over as many councils in ‘financial and service delivery crisis’

Gauteng will never return to its former glory days as a beacon of hope for the rest of SA if the provincial government fails to address the root causes of challenges plaguing the province.

The Gauteng committee on cooperative governance and traditional affairs yesterday said there was a decline in the performance of a number of municipalities – Sedibeng, Midvaal, Emfuleni, Lesedi, Merafong, Mogale City, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and Joburg – “evidenced in the grim service delivery reality experienced by communities”.

National Treasury also flagged poor financial management at local government level as a problem, with 43 municipalities in “financial and service delivery crisis”.

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Treasury said allocations increased by R14.3 billion over the medium term, however, “many municipalities fail to adopt funded budgets, which means they will not be financially sustainable and implies they lack credible financial management”.

‘Provinces far from feeling the relief’

Thokozile Madonko, senior researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at Wits University, said despite the bailout in Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s budget speech, most of the provinces were far from feeling the relief.

“It isn’t really additional resources towards municipalities being able to tackle their current demands, but it’s really looking at some of the historical issues municipalities like Tshwane and Emfuleni are facing,” she noted.

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Madonko said a province like Gauteng needed clear conditionality around the “conditional grants to ensure that they roll out prepaid meters or smart meters to get a broader base and to deal with the illegal connections as intended”.

Public policy lecturer at Mpumalanga University Dr John Molepo said it was worrying there were no plans mentioned towards capacitating municipalities to deal with corruption and collection of revenue.

“They can throw money at the problem but as long as issues like the damning report into Tshwane’s financials, confirming over R10 billion in irregular expenditure, are not dealt with, in a few years, they’ll be back where they started. This has been a crisis in many municipalities.

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“They need to ensure accountability because that is key for municipalities to sustain themselves,” said Molepo.

Gauteng municipalities owe Eskom

Giving his first State of the Province Address, Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi said all municipalities in Gauteng owed Eskom R8.6 billion, “of this, R6 billion is owed by Emfuleni”.

He said it was time the Gauteng government intervened. However, during a Gauteng Legislature debate, the EFF’s Lebo Masoleng said Emfuleni was beyond repair and that Lesufi should ensure the municipalities can deliver basic services instead of building smart and mega cities.

– reitumetsem@citizen.co.za