DA wants answers over how 64 underperforming municipalities will be dealt with

Marti Wenger, Shadow Deputy Minister of Co - operative Governance and Traditional Affairs
22 October 2009

The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the ANC’s decision to fire the mayor of Mpumalanga’s Lekwa municipality, the mayoral committee, the Speaker and the chief whip and its move to put the municipality under administration. The Lekwa Municipality comprises of Standerton and Sakhile, which have been subject to violent protests this month, and the situation there is clearly in a state of crisis.

However, the ANC has now set a benchmark from which its future actions need to be gauged, and so the crucial question in the coming weeks and months will be whether the ANC will take action against the other 64 crisis-stricken municipalities identified in a recent report on the state of the municipalities.

With this in mind, I will ask the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs: 

• Where the skills capacity will come from, if it is determined that these municipalities need to be put under administration as a result of their underperformance.
• Whether there has been an adequate budget allocated to deal with municipalities in need of administration
• Whether councillors and officials that are found to be ineffective will be held to account in the same way as officials in Lekwa.

It is essential that we now see competent officials, rather than deployed cadres, appointed to Lekwa municipality, and all other municipalities that face serious service delivery problems.
 
Further, while we welcome the action taken by the ANC, one also can’t help but wonder why the violence and vandalism was allowed to run for weeks without something being done about it, and whether earlier action to address the service delivery problems would not have been appropriate.