Accountability is a myth in SA

During the local government elections we heard much about accountability, from political analysts who don’t understand the system.

During a TV debate, an analyst said ward councillors should be held accountable for poor service delivery. Really?
Common sense may suggest that if service delivery is poor, your ward councillor should be nailed.

Yet there are flaws in the local government legal framework which make such accountability problematic. You can hold your ward councillor accountable for many things but not service delivery in the sense of physically delivering services such as water, electricity, road maintenance or (heaven forbid) grass cutting.

That is the responsibility of unelected officials under the authority of the city manager. The system is not designed to be responsive to voters.

By law, ward councillors are not allowed to give, or purport to give, any instruction to any official. Nor may they interfere in any way with administration. Having no executive authority, they should not be held directly responsible if an administration falters.

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They can ask, raise issues in council and report matters higher up the ladder. But mostly they get things done by persuasion and persistence. They must ensure your concerns are heard in the right places. And they must communicate.

In a Trumpian fantasy world you can simply point a finger and say “you’re fired”. In South Africa, we have worker-friendly labour laws, overlain by municipal legislation making it difficult (but not impossible) to get rid of nonperformers at any level.

To fix Joburg, which has about 33 000 employees, we need to do a lot more than change ward councillors. We need efficient management, for a start.

Councillors who have executive authority include the mayor and members of the mayoral committee (MMCs).

They may tell people what to do. They are generally not ward councillors and are not directly elected in the way ward councillors are elected. MMCs are chosen from proportional representation (PR) party lists.

Residents have negligible influence here. MMCs are picked by the mayor, after the mayor is elected by fellow councillors, not by residents.

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In coalitions this tenuous relationship between voters and MMCs is stretched further when parties with minimal voter support are given mayoral committee positions.

For our democracy to be more responsive, we need electoral reform at every level of government. The mood is ripe for such reform.

Members of parliament and provincial legislatures are shielded from the will of the people.

They are not directly elected. As long as they keep their party bosses happy and their party performs on election day, their jobs are secure. The same applies to PR councillors.

Ward councillors are the only directly elected public representatives in South Africa.

Hold us accountable, but not for matters where we have no authority. Not until the system is overhauled to give us more authority, including ward budgets.