The latest municipal audit results (2017-18) released by the Auditor-General (AG), Kimi Makwetu, found amongst others that a third of municipalities are not in a financial position to pay their creditors. The financial woes of municipalities weigh heavily on municipal creditors, in particular, bulk services suppliers, such as Eskom and water boards. As of June 2018, municipalities owed Eskom R18,26 billion with arrears amounting to R9,12 billion while debt to Water Boards stood at R 9,05 billion with arrears at R5,85 billion, respectively.
News
On 21 February 2019 the then Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Dr Zweli Mkhize, delivered his address on the Municipal Structures Amendment Bill in Parliament. In his address he stressed that the Amendment Bill is aligned to the tasks that President Cyril Ramaphosa mentioned when giving the State of the Nation Address in February 2019. Among these tasks is the need to accelerate inclusive growth, job creation, improving the education system, improving the conditions of life for all South Africans, fighting state capture and corruption, skills development and strengthening the State’s capacity to respond to the needs of the people. Dr Mkhize further stressed that the Amendment Bill will strengthen municipal governance and address the management of local government elections. It remains to be seen whether this will be yet another case of over-promising and under-delivering by our government or a win for effective governance in municipalities.
The Dullah Omar Institute is very proud to re-introduce the Local Government Bulletin, our regular newsletter with articles, updates and opinion pieces on local government law, policy and practice. The first Bulletin appeared in 1999, on the eve of the first democratic local government elections. The founding editors were Nico Steytler (now South African Research Chair in Multilevel Government) and Johann Mettler (now City Manager of Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality) assisted by Jaap de Visser (now Director of the Dullah Omar Institute).
On the 13th July 2019, Laws.Africa together with OpenUp and two students sourced from the Dullah Omar Institute (DOI) successfully hosted a one-day youth orientated By-laws Workshop to the Cape Agulhas Youth Council in Bredasdorp. In attendance were, among others, officials from the Cape Agulhas municipality including the Deputy Mayor.
In 2015, member states committed to delivering access to justice for all by 2030. But this year a report by the Pathfinders Task Force on Justice found that 5.1 billion people still do not have access to justice. How is this gap going to be bridged?
Cape Town, 11 July 2019 - The highly centralised power to appoint boards of South Africa’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) needs to be dispersed. This is one of the recommendations made in a recent submission by the Dullah Omar Institute (DOI) to the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into allegations of State Capture.
A group of civil society organisations recently came up with a mixed bag of demands for Parliament, ranging from improving the institutional health and culture of the parliamentary administration to ongoing ethics training of MPs during their term.
South Africans were reminded on Saturday not to think that the state of the ANC is the measure of where we are as a people. Struggle activist and theologian Dr Allan Boesak gave a memorial lecture at the District Six Museum in celebration of late minister of justice Dullah Omar and late Judge Essa Moosa’s contribution to the law in South Africa.
South Africans were reminded on Saturday not to think that the state of the ANC is the measure of where we are as a people. Struggle activist and theologian Dr Allan Boesak gave a memorial lecture at the District Six Museum in celebration of late minister of justice Dullah Omar and late Judge Essa Moosa’s contribution to the law in South Africa.
Despite public pressures for urgency in addressing problems in state-owned entities (SOEs), there is still a long road ahead for government’s new law meant to regulate these entities if the Department of Public Enterprises’ Annual Performance Plan (APP) is anything to go by. In the APP it is envisaged that the Shareholder Management Bill which will govern all SOEs, will only be adopted into law by the 2020/21 financial year.
Government departments surveyed by the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) is failing at gender responsive procurement and generally show a lack of understanding of these critical transformation provisions, a recent report found. The CGE in the 2018/19 financial year surveyed a small sample of departments on their gender transformation efforts in public procurement. The CGE’s report tabled in Parliament in June showed most of the departments surveyed failed to integrate gender as a main component in their procurement practices.
Recent media reports highlighting the issuing of fines to homeless people based on laws or city by-laws which prohibits people from sleeping in any undesignated area or obstructing sidewalks sparked much outrage, with officials presenting arguments woefully justifying the existence and enforcement of these provisions with generalised statements.