Newsletter 72- Disagreement with the Performance Agreement -21 May 2010
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On 29 April 2010, cabinet ministers signed performance agreements with president Jacob Zuma. These performance agreements have a direct bearing on municipalities, particularly the agreement signed by the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, Mr Sicelo Shiceka.
The performance agreement initiative follows growing community dissatisfaction with Government’s service delivery programmes. This has been seen in much increased protest action in response to the perception that municipalities do not deliver services satisfactorily. In 2009 there were approximately 105 protest action sites countrywide and by the first quarter of 2010 there had been approximately 54.
In signing his performance agreement Mr Shiceka committed himself to achieving a number of targets by 2014, these targets include:
- The delivery of basic services which include water, sanitation, electricity and waste management;
- The creation of 4,5 million job opportunities by 2014 through the Community Works Programme;
- The transformation of administrative and financial systems of local government, which includes Supply Chain Management;
- The filling of six critical senior municipal posts, namely Municipal Manager, Chief Financial Officer, Town Clerk, Town Engineer, Human Resources Manager and the Communications manager as the basic minimum for every municipality;
- That all municipalities in the country achieve clean audits by 2014; and
- The building municipal capacity to enable municipalities to collect 90% of their revenues.
This initiative raises a number of points:
- It is worrying that the president has to intervene in order to ensure that such basic ministerial objectives are met;
- The performance agreement is in part vague with limited quantitative targets; and
- The performance agreement time-line ends in 2014. This is the last administrative year for the current Government.
The minister is facing significantly high demands. One example is that in 2007 more than half the residents in some municipalities did not have access to piped water and sanitation. In the OR Tambo district municipality (Eastern Cape) and the Sisonke district municipality (KwaZulu-Natal) 64.4% and 52.7% of residents respectively did not have access to piped water. In the OR Tambo district municipality and the Umkhanyakude district municipality (KwaZulu-Natal) 41.2% and 33.3% of residents respectively had no toilet facility or were still using the bucket system.
Also in 2007, South Africa had an unemployment rate of 22.4%. In the same year, the unemployment rate in some municipalities was as high as 66.1% and 33.3% in the Metsweding district municipality (Gauteng) and the Motheo district municipality (Free State) respectively.
Government has devised numerous plans and programmes to combat service delivery backlogs. This performance agreement can be seen as an emergency intervention to try to ensure that the objectives of these plans are met. The signing of the performance agreement also comes amidst much public pressure on the government to deliver a high standard of services to citizens. It is remains to be seen whether this latest performance agreement will be able to adequately address the scope of challenges faced by local government.
-Nachi Majoe
