President Cyril Ramaphosa has labelled wrongdoing and bad practice by local government officials and public representatives as tantamount to treason.
Ramaphosa was responding to questions by MPs at the National Council of Provinces on Wednesday afternoon.
He said he was paying attention to the professionalisation of the public service, which he said would cover positions such as municipal mayors, municipal managers and elected officials such as mayors.
“Where they get involved in wrongdoing — and wrongdoing should span across a number of activities that do not advance the interests of our people, such as corrupt activities, stealing money or even mismanagement — that in itself should constitute an affront to our people, and when it comes to where we do not spend money which has been allocated, I have characterised that as treasonous against our people, because our people, as they elect us, they expect us to do the work that we've been delegated and elected and mandated to do,” he said.
Ramaphosa said when without cause or reason municipalities fail to spend allocated funding, “it should be seen as something that is almost like a crime against our people”.
He promised to upscale consequence management, admitting that the government had not acted for a long time but said the government needed to put consequence management into top gear.
“Where we actually demonstrate that when you violate integrity provisions or principles, where you don't act in accordance with what you are expected to do, there will be consequence management, so we will be upscaling that and making sure that, indeed, to those who are put in those positions are able to live up to the expectations that our people want.”
MPs asked questions after the scathing report by the auditor-general’s office in which only 41 out of 257 councils received a clean audit.
Auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke’s 2023/24 audit outcomes found that of the eight metropolitan municipalities only Cape Town received a clean audit. Maluleke told parliament that despite her continued calls for both national and provincial governments to intervene in local government, municipalities were still receiving poor audit outcomes.
Ramaphosa said the department of co-operative governance had embarked on a process to update the white paper on local government to ensure that the local government system was effective as well as being fit for purpose.
“The minister is engaging in consultations with political parties, with representatives of provincial as well as local government, and has included various social partners. In this regard, just this week he held a dialogue to contribute to the review of the white paper on optimising the number of municipalities, as well as the appropriateness of the two-tier system of local government,” he said.
There were strong arguments for having fewer municipalities while some argued that there were also strong reasons to ensure that local government remained local and accountable, he said. This decision must be based on a careful assessment of the evidence as the government aims to ensure that municipalities themselves are financially sustainable to remove any duplication of functions and to improve service delivery.
The reduction of the number of municipalities would mean people will be less represented as many municipalities will be far from the communities they serve, he said.
“And have we been able to improve the livelihoods of our people by structuring our municipalities as we did, and that is why the discussion that minister is leading and the reform of our municipalities in landscape is very important and very timely. So I would encourage all of us to participate in that.”
Underspending and misspending, as well as corruption, continues to take place in a number of areas of government, he added.
“One of the challenges is the revenue base that many municipalities don't have. Much as they are located as entities of government among our people they [some municipalities] don't have the way to raise revenue. They don't have the way to ensure that the services that are delivered are actually funded by those who enjoy those services.”
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