Municipalities cautioned to prevent financial crisis
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Dinilohlanga Mekuto
29 September 2023, 15:35 [SAST]
Reading Time: 4minutes
Municipalities across the country must take urgent steps to prevent a further decline of their financial viability. The call emerged during discussions at a local government summit held by the Democratic Alliance (DA) in Durban.
Members from some Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)-led municipalities were also present.
The DA says the summit is to look at the state of municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal under the theme, “Ensuring municipalities work for the betterment of citizens.” South African Local Government Association (SALGA) chairperson, Thami Ntuli, and DA leaders painted a gloomy picture addressing delegates.
All is not well with some municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal, some including Msunduzi, home to the province’s capital city Pietermaritzburg, has been under administration by COGTA for years.
Addressing the DA’s summit, the chair in KwaZulu-Natal of the SALGA revealed that government debt to municipalities has tripled in the last 12 months.
“Never in this history of this democracy has government debt owed to municipalities been so high. Government debt owed to municipalities in the province of KwaZulu-Natal alone increased from R800 million to R3 billion in the 12 months from July 2022 to July 2023, rates, water and waste are important revenue sources, municipal consumer debt in KwaZulu-Natal amount to R43 billion as of 2023.”
Nonkululeko Hlophe’s tweet from earlier:
#sabcnews The Democratic Alliance in KwaZulu-Natal is hosting a one day local government Summit in Durban. The party is to look at the state of municipalities in the province. Here is KZN Salga chair Thami Ntuli opening remarks. pic.twitter.com/h9DiG6BgnN
KwaZulu-Natal DA leader, Francois Rodgers says their coalition with the IFP in some municipalities is restoring hope to these communities.
“People have lost hope. They have no one to go to. There is no response from the top and people lose hope and they lose faith in institutions and we got to turn that around. That I believe what we are doing today and what the provincial chairperson has been leading with our interactions with the IFP is what people want. It is the hope that they need. It is the hope that we can get out of this quagmire of political instability and build cities, build towns and build a province that has economic opportunities for everybody.”
Umngeni mayor and the DA’s Premier candidate in the province, Chris Pappas, told delegates that sometimes when you take over as a mayor, one walks into a hostile environment where the culture of accountability is none existent.
He shared more details on his time as mayor in the first DA run municipality in the province.
“We still have many issues in Umngeni. I am not going to pretend like it is the perfect place. You don’t undo 30 years of destruction in 22 months but you can certainly make progress and re instill hope into people. We have not yet fixed Umngeni but we have rescued Umngeni so that we can start rebuilding. One thing that we need to understand is that regulatory and legislative frameworks in South Africa around local government has been created to support a particular agenda and that is the agenda of the African National Congress. We are automatically in a backfoot when we are into government because we are working in a system that has been created to achieve someone else’s agenda. The first thing is to challenge the existing framework we work under because it is not geared towards the DA difference.”
As political parties gear up for next year’s general election, the DA in KZN says they are optimistic to increase their gains in the province.
DA in KwaZulu-Natal hosts Local Government Summit: Dean Macpherson:
