The Sunday Times recently carried an advertisement by the South African Local Government Association (Salga), calling for papers for its upcoming ‘Research Colloquium’.
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In the face of the dysfunctionality that exists at almost all local government structures in the country, such dysfunctionality represented by rampant corruption and non-existent service delivery, this got me thinking about what exactly supports the existence of an entity such as Salga.
Support and solutions
A quick look at Salga’s website reveals lofty objectives such as ‘supporting its members to fulfil their developmental obligations’ and ‘provide solutions to the challenges facing local government’.
Further articulated as one of its core mandates is ‘capacity building’. My contention is that the organisation has failed in both these key mandates. The practise of ‘deployment’ of under or unqualified individuals to key municipal positions occurs to this day, and it is hard to imagine that the overall governance structure of the entity, which is comprised of mayors and councillors from member municipalities, is going to question this situation, given that many of them may be beneficiaries of ‘deployment ‘ themselves.
Salga’s intention of ‘Inspiring Service Delivery’ will remain unfulfilled, unless it has the courage to start confronting the real issues in local government.
Self-criticism is a rare human trait, I daresay more so amongst politicians!
Pipe dream
To its credit, though, the organisation continues to generate a great deal of information on what constitutes ‘best practise’ in municipal structures, particularly through its collaborations with international organisations and foreign local government entities.
However, the attainment of such levels of delivery and competence will remain a pipe dream unless and until the problems in the core structure of local municipalities are addressed. Just releasing press statements condemning the behaviour of residents during service delivery protests, as it did during the recent incidents in Amahlati Local Municipality, will not cut it anymore.
Salga’s intention of ‘Inspiring Service Delivery’ will remain unfulfilled, unless it has the courage to start confronting the real issues in local government. Until then, the perception that it just exists to create and sustain well-paid employment for a few fortunate people will be entrenched in my mind.
After matriculating, Vijay Naidoo studied Economics in the UK. Upon his return, hejoined the family construction business as MD for 10 years.
He subsequently joined his sister in their furniture manufacturing business as director for quality assurance and operations. He was responsible for all quality aspects of their products, and led the project to the business achieving an ISO 9000 quality accreditation. As an export focused business, this was important for our international competitiveness.
Mr Naidoo has an abiding interest in quality management and productivity improvement, particularly in manufacturing.
More recently, he has focused a lot of his time on giving back to the community by way of mentorship of small businesses and sitting on the executive of the South Coast Chamber of Commerce. He also sits on the Board of the Ugu South Coast Development Agency.
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