President Cyril Ramaphosa’s indifferent attitude towards problems at municipalities – particularly the 108 municipalities with unfunded budgets – is shocking and comes down to a passive acceptance of the current situation.
His excuses, including that many municipalities’ residents are too poor to pay municipal rates and taxes and are, therefore, dependent on equitable grants for survival, do not address the underlying problems and serve as proof that the FF Plus’s proposal for smaller municipalities is one of the best solutions.
On 3 September 2021, during a parliamentary question-and-answer session, the FF Plus put it to the President that the level of non-compliance with the legislation governing municipalities, as pointed out in the latest report by the Auditor-General (AG), is alarming and that it could cause serious problems for the relevant municipalities.
South Africa has a legal rule which stipulates that when one step is irregular, all the actions that follow that initial step are also irregular. Therefore, initial non-compliance with legal prescripts may have serious consequences.
This is also applicable to the 108 municipalities that have unfunded budgets and as a result, do not comply with the requirements of the Municipal Financial Management Act.
The consequences of this, as explained above, include that these municipalities could be compelled by means of legal proceedings to repay unlawful rates and taxes to thousands of consumers, which would ultimately cause the municipalities to collapse completely and be dissolved.
Instead of tackling and resolving the root causes of these problems, crisis management is done time and again.
That is why the FF Plus wanted to know whether President Ramaphosa would, in his capacity as President of the ANC, take action against ANC councilors and mayors who allow such non-compliance to occur on their watch.
The people’s only option to stop the mismanagement and destruction of local government is to get rid of the incompetent ANC and to replace it with skilled authorities that will use tax money wisely so as to benefit all.
Read the original article in Afrikaans by Michal Groenewald on FF Plus
