Farmers, burdened with fixing dilapidated road infrastructure themselves, have provoked renewed scrutiny at “broken” municipalities where local government has failed agriculture.
What has led to the collapse of some municipalities in Mzansi and how does this affect agricultural production? Dr Caryn Abrahams, an expert on agriculture and food security from Wits University, tells Food For Mzansi that the national government should be stepping up.
She is of the view that economically-driven industries like agriculture should not have to pay for a lack of basic service delivery in communities.
Sinenhlanhla Ngwenya: In Mzansi, what has led to the collapse of municipalities?
Dr Caryn Abrahams: What has led to the collapse of municipalities in the country we might blame on the cost of electricity, inflation and failing infrastructure. While they are contributing factors, the blame squarely is on the mismanagement of funds from a municipal level that is highly indebted to entities, and has a large degree of public debt [non-paying of services].
We must also call a spade a spade, this is also related to corruption. We have unethical, unaccountable leadership at the municipal level where they see the municipality as a place to enrich themselves from the funds that are dedicated to particular projects. As such, it is becoming a point where looting, corruption and mismanagement of funds are crippling, so this is why we see a large percentage of municipalities not being functional, which led to them being put under administration.
So, all these factors contribute to the failures and collapse of municipalities.
Farmers are known to step in and fix roads, and patch potholes. Should municipalities step in and offer rebates?
I think all over the country we have seen groups of community members, including farmers by the way, getting involved in fixing infrastructure because of failing services. However, I am not sure if the government will ever do something like rebates or reduce rates and taxes because those are the only cash from communities that the municipalities enjoy, and to subsidise that, will be quite difficult.
It will also mean there needs to be some kind of rating mechanism to acknowledge what is being done. Let us be honest, the scope of auditing in our municipalities is just not within the local government to do it themselves.
I think when farmers are doing it, they are taking it from the idea of democratic citizenship and not doing it on behalf of the municipality, but doing it for them to have a conducive environment.
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Whose responsibility is it to ensure big and small businesses have favourable working conditions in municipalities?
I think this speaks to inter-governmental relations, about having a province having an eye on a particular investment such as agriculture and luring in more companies to come and invest in economic development projects in those communities.
It is not the responsibility of the municipality to ensure that big business stays, however, the municipality must ensure that service delivery is rendered, which if it’s not done, has implications.
Big business on the other side cannot crank up the service delivery of a municipality, it is in the instances where, for example, Clover left Lichtenburg, that province and national needed to get involved.
Another example is the energy crisis, which is not a municipal problem. Even though the municipalities have reticulation of water as a service to offer, that is not where policy is made, that is not where the decisions are made to continue to throw money into a black hole like Eskom.
Is there a political will to address the decaying status of municipalities?
I think the political will to address the decaying status of municipalities links much to politics and constituencies. I believe there is, I think there is political will for the kind of provincial systems we have in the country because it very much links to who is in power at the local and provincial levels.
There is deep-seated unaccountability that has taken root in the system and that is far more dangerous than political will.
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