Smaller local authorities are closer to the people they serve and hence better able to help them
Residents protesting over poor service delivery and irregular appointments in the metro municipality in Heidedal on May 18, 2021. Picture: GALLO IMAGES/VOLKSBLAD/MLUNGISI LOUW
To recap, outside the eight metropolitan municipalities, SA has a two-tier system of local government, with all non-metro citizens served by a local and a district municipality. With national and provincial government, this creates a four-tier system of government. I do not believe this is necessary or effective, a view shared by Evans. But I believe we should work towards having fewer district municipalities while retaining local municipalities as they are, based on the following reasoning.
Second, to follow this issue on size, the evidence on performance must be considered. Most significant is a comprehensive analysis by the National Treasury and department of co-operative governance undertaken in 2016/2017 to assess the extent to which municipalities are “distressed”. This analysis assessed service delivery, governance and financial distress and shows no clear relationship between size of municipality and distress.
This is based on two fundamental principles. The system of transfers from the national fiscus is intended to cover the cost of provision of basic services to the poor, whether they live in a large or small municipality.
District municipalities that have been mandated to provide water and sanitation services in rural areas of SA serve an average of 750,000 people each and have largely failed: they have created expensive and cumbersome bureaucracies primarily using transfers from the national fiscus; they raise far too little revenue from those that can afford to pay and have proven unable to recruit sufficient technical expertise.
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