JOHANNESBURG - Municipal agencies are little more than a means to disguise looting, corruption and the misallocation of public resources.
That’s according to governance expert Alex van den Heever.
He was responding to National Treasury’s decision to withhold funding from 69 municipalities over persistent financial management failures.
Treasury says the move is aimed at enforcing stricter financial discipline and accountability after repeated non-compliance with financial management legislation.
Van den Heever argues that the underlying problem will not be resolved until political appointments are replaced with technically competent leadership.
"They're paid enormous amounts of money and also deliver nothing, so they are essentially again a loss-making arrangement in many cases, just an attempt to disguise the mismanagement and the misallocation of resources," he said.
"We need a fundamental change to the way the metros and the municipalities are being managed and held to account."
Van den Heever said South Africa needs a complete overhaul of municipal governance and accountability.
He believes the only lasting solution is to remove senior leaders responsible for persistent mismanagement and replace them with competent administrators, warning that withholding funds alone will not change the behaviour of dysfunctional municipalities.
"We are facing a situation where I think we've got a belligerent sector of municipalities who are not going to change. Their behaviour will not even change if the money is withheld," he said.
"So the problem really is what do we actually do to solve this problem rather than some form of minor mitigation, which is potentially what this is."
He said withholding funds could have serious implications for the affected metros, but Treasury may be intending to use some of the withheld allocations to pay bulk suppliers directly.
"But that in itself doesn't stop what's happening in the rest of these metros. The problem will continue. It's not solving it."