Politics.za

The Gauteng Department of Transport is unable to account for millions of Rands in revenue.

The accounting records kept by the department were so poor that Gauteng Auditor-General Adronica Masemola chose not to express an opinion on the department’s audit report and refused to confirm its claimed R980-million revenue.
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Gauteng Transport MEC Ignatius Jacobs admitted that his department – which has had qualified audits for the past two years – deserved just one star (out of five) for its woeful administration record.

Well at least they won’t be in charge of the entire R20 billion Gautrain budget right? Right?!?

Yikes! The Eastern Cape provincial government can not account for 88.5% of it’s budget. Of the total budget of R34.1 billion for 2005/6, R30.2 billion is unaccounted for.

Despite previously claiming to have given up the quest to unseat Cape Town Mayor Helen Zille in order to focus on calming it’s internal party rifts, there seems to be a rumour that the ANC/ID will try and get provincial Local Government MEC Richard Dyanti to reform the Cape Town City Council under a multiparty executive committee, thereby making the mayor little more than a ceremonial figurehead and forcing the inclusion of the ANC and ID onto the executive committee.

There were rumours that this would be done just after the DA took power in Cape Town but that didn’t pan out. As mentioned previously the ANC in the Western Cape has previously made statements that they were giving up trying to remove Zille from power so that’s another strike against this rumour. There’s also the fact that this law should only to be used (I hope) in cases where a council is completely useless and needs external intervention, a case that does not apply to Cape Town.

Update: Helen Zille is battening down the hatches and getting ready for a potential court fight should this happen.

After writing in May about the possibility of government deciding to scrap the provinces in order to speed up service delivery, the Sunday Times has managed to get it’s hands on the actual confidential document outlining the proposal. The scrapping could be done either by:

• Abolishing provincial legislatures while retaining current administrations with an elected executive;
• Abolishing provincial legislatures while retaining current administrations, with an executive appointed by the national government;
• Abolishing provincial legislatures with no appointed or elected executive, with the current administration retained;
• Abolishing legislatures as well as provincial administrations.

Of the current nine provinces, only four or five would remain. ‘Problem’ provinces such as the Northern Cape, Limpopo, North West Province and Mpumalanga would be amalgamated with the stronger provinces. Although suprisingly (or rather unsuprisingly if you consider this is an ANC led government) the Eastern Cape, a definite problem province, will remain untouched. If this decision is accepted it is expected to be implemented by the 2009 elections.

Now abolishing provinces is a pretty radical proposal. First of all there is no guarantee that this will help with service delivery. Secondly if this is done it will potentially be very embarassing for the ANC, an admittal that they have not delivered in the past 15 years. Thirdly it’s going to cost a lot of money. If the thought of changing the names of a few towns and roads got you hot under the collar then the cost associated with reorganising the entire country will likely give you a major coronary.

And there is the fact that over and above the costs related to the scrapping of some of the provinces is the fact that if carried out basically all the funds allocated in the past twelve years for provincial governments, legislature and administrative infrastructure might as well have been taken out to the middle of the Karoo, dumped in a large pile, doused in petrol and burnt.

The ANC has continued discussions on whether it should significantly curtail provincial government. Previously I had thought that entire provinces themselves would be scrapped but it seems that rather the actual provincial government will be turned into a provincial administration (making Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool’s predictions come true). Provincial legislatures and MEC’s would disappear, although I’m not sure if the staff counts at provincial departments would be reduced when you consider the number of people they employ as well as their usage these days as ‘patronage’.

Meanwhile in national government some MP’s are starting to wonder if perhaps this whole centralisation thing isn’t going a bit too far. With most legislature in parliament now being driven by the executive ANC MP’s are probably wandering the halls of parliament questioning what exactly it is they do. To quote the linked article:

Debate in the National Assembly really has started to look like the ritual observation of important days,” one senior ANC MP said. Instead of drawing confidence from their overwhelming majority, and putting difficult issues on the table, several ruling party MPs complain, their colleagues make worthy speeches on political anniversaries and leave the debating to the opposition.

This is probably another result of the ANC’s ‘speak no evil’ in public approach to party politics. There’s plenty of debate in closed door ANC meetings but little out in the open in parliament. Some ANC MP’s however would like to overcome their legislative impotence by trying to exert more control over departmental budgets, in order to have some kind of checks and balances control over the executive. MP’s actually could have done this already, unfortunately it seems most of them have been more than happy to be little more than highly paid rubber stamps for the past 12 years.

The ANC are holding an executive committee meeting today, with both Pres. Thabo Mbeki and ex-VP (but still ANC VP) Jacob Zuma attending. Among the points on the agenda are the drawing up of a document governing the ethics of business ventures involving ANC members, something which probably should have been in existence years ago.

Another interesting point is that the ANC is still discussing whether they should amalgamate certain provinces. If you thought changing the name of an airport was an administrative headache be prepared for the migraine of having entire provinces disappear. It’s clear from this talking point that the ANC is becoming more and more frustrated that service delivery is not taking place with the speed and efficiency the country requires.

The ANC, always a fan of centralisation, is beginning to look at provinces as even bigger roadblocks than before. Even ANC Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool commented on the fact that national government would prefer if the provincial governments were little more than ‘provincial administrations’. And let’s not forge the fact that we do in fact have a second house of parliament, the National Council of Provinces, which has basically been sidelined and removed from the legislative process. The ANC has expressed the feelings before that they believe a national-local government linkup could be more efficient service delivery vechile. Whether that is true or not will be the result of a very costly experiment, should they decide to carry it out.

Although in defence of (some) provinces perhaps national government should get rid of some underperforming government departments (Home Affairs, we’re looking at you) before turning their attention to the the troubles they perceive in the provinces.

This is a strange story. The ANC mayor of the Berg River Municipality, Sanette Smit, has resigned suddenly claiming to have endured “racism, sexism, defamation and verbal abuse” supposedly from a provincial ANC leader. She’s remaining tightlipped on the alleged perpetrator’s identity having referred her complaints to the ANC to investigate although she does reserve the right to seek relief elsewhere (in other words a court case).

I’m still not clear why she had to resign as mayor though as she states she will be an ANC party member in the future. I assume it’s because as mayor she would have to interact with the alleged harasser regularly. So which ANC provincial leader would mayors have to deal with on a regular basis?

Helen Zille is not the only female political leader going on a firing spree. Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela (aka the ‘barefoot premier’) has fired both the provincial ministers for health and economic affairs.

The Eastern Cape certainly needs a kick in the pants, it is one of South Africa’s poorest provinces, despite being a major manufacturing hub.

Well if you thought renaming a few suburbs and streets was going to cause administrative nightmares does Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi have a doozy for you. Apparently the reduction of the number of provinces is firmly on the table.

That’s right. After spending millions of Rand building provincial government, constructing grandiose provincial legislatures and paying massive provincial civil service salaries (read the Sunday Times career section and you’d think the North West province was the largest employer in the country with the way they’re hiring) national government has decided “meh, maybe we don’t need them after all”. I mean the National Council of Provinces (the other house of parliament, or did you forget) is pretty much irrlevant these days anyway so let’s just get rid of the whole charade.

Someamongus over at South Africa Blog thinks that this is just a threat from the executive to get the provinces back into lock step and that’s a valid point. Of course the ANC national parliament has passed a few laws and then later had to go back and redraft them when it was clear the laws weren’t just going to work (remember the draft Immigration Act?), so this might just be the same thing on a much larger much more expensive scale.

Personally I think it might be the sign of a nervous ANC. The ANC knows that it’s biggest weakness heading into municipal elections in 2006 and national elections in 2009 is it’s lack of service delivery and it seems some in the ANC higher up beleive provincial government is probably getting in the way. From the article it seems Mufamadi believes service delivery can be done much more efficiently with only national government (providing the money) and local municipalities (doing the implementation). While this idea has some merit, it can be done without disbanding provinces and I get helluva nervous when something like ANC electoral strategy could be causing major constitutional rewrites.

Isn’t it great being a republic. We don’t have roaylty hogging the public holidays and Christmas eve television programming… What’s that? We do have royalty you say? Well yes you’re obviously referring to King Goodwill Zwelithini, Chief of the Zulu, but he is more of a cultural leader, not one to be a burden on his people… Six million rand you say? For armoured waBenzi? For each queen? And R300 000 for medical aid? Well I guess those are vitals needed in todays day and age… Are sheets a vital need? Well yes of course, everyone needs a nice bed… Yes I’m sure I’d also sleep nicely on sheets costing R280 000.