Parkview Senior School’s hall was packed to capacity on October 17 for the Joburg Crisis Alliance’s 10th summit, focusing on the upcoming local government elections.

Leading the conversation about the election context for Johannesburg was chartered accountant and academic Khaya Sithole, who was in conversation with Public Affairs Research Institute executive director Dr Sithembile Mbete.

Mbete highlighted that the upcoming elections were consequential for a number of reasons. “It is an election that is not only about the local government context but a judgment or a test of how satisfied or dissatisfied people are with the GNU elected in 2024,” she said. “For cities like Johannesburg, which over the last 10 years has seen decline and instability in service delivery and governance, it’s a critical election.”

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She added that an examination of the City of Johannesburg’s 2015 annual report revealed a multibillion-rand budget surplus, with approximately 8% allocated to capital expenditure for infrastructure repairs, reflecting a time when municipal governance was noticeably more stable. “The unhappiness then was due to a lot of national issues, but there was a sense that there was a bit of improvement being made with all of the changes including the coalitions. Although the books of the city may have looked much better in 2015 than they look now, delivery wasn’t being felt rapidly or broadly enough, which contributed to the loss of the administration’s elections in 2016.”

Mbete added that the city is in a worse position now because no surplus exists, while it grapples with significant debt and severe revenue collection challenges.

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The agenda also included the explanation and discussion of the importance of ward committees, a statutory body for participatory democracy, comprising the ward councillor as chairperson plus no more than 10 people from the ward.

Section 73(3) of the Local Government: Municipal Structures Act 117 of 1998 leaves the council to make rules regarding:

• How members are elected,
• When members must leave office, and
• How often the committees meet.

• The four things the committee is not:
• The councillor’s team,
• A party structure,
• Advisory-only by nature, or
• The only route.

• The JCA wants the following rules to change:
• A majority of members being able to require a meeting within 14 days,
• If the chairperson does not attend, then members elect a deputy chairperson,
• Any three members can place an item,
• The agenda goes out with the meeting notice,
• An independent secretariat from the speaker’s office, with minutes on the city website within 14 days, and
• A Section 74(b) delegation letting the committee submit directly to the speaker.
  The summit ended with a Q&A session.

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