SA municipalities declare national state of emergency?

Many of South Africa's 283 municipalities are in a "state of paralysis & dysfunction" Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka said on Wednesday.

"In terms of the new mandate, the department has committed to provide provincialised hands-on support to provincial and local government to ensure that they are in a better position to execute their mandates.

"This work has started already. As we execute this task, it became apparent that many of our municipalities are in a state of paralysis and dysfunction so much that they needed extra-ordinary interventions," Shiceka told the SA Local Government Association in East London.

One of the key problems facing municipalities was a reputational crisis, he said.

"This is a sector that is perceived to be incompetent, disorganised and riddled with corruption and maladministration.

"During several research surveys conducted regarding public perception on spheres of government, local government has always scored the lowest.

"Even the latest research results points to that sad perception. For that matter, the results show that the public rating of municipalities is at an all-time low."

Its assessment of the disarray some municipalities were in stemmed from a detailed study of municipalities in the North West undertaken in the last two months.

"This process was characterised by meetings that concluded at 5am in the morning, where ordinary councillors making shocking confessions of rampant and systemic corruption, and senior officials in government broke down in tears admitting that they were clueless as to the real state of local government in their province," he told Salga.

The department found a range of problems persisting during its assessment and these included: a problematic political/administrative interface, lack of accountability, fraud and corruption, dysfunctional caucuses, weak financial management, poor service delivery, unsatisfactory labour relations and weak public participation structures.

"I am taking the liberty of sharing this experience with this assembly to argue that if the North West is indicative, in any way, of what is happening in our municipalities in the other eight provinces then we need to declare a national state of emergency on local government in this country," he said.