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Mail & Guardian
2 days ago
- Business
- Mail & Guardian
Why a review of the White Paper on Local Government matters
Local government are elected to provide services, but many struggle to do this. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy In April 2025, the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs released a discussion document on the review of the 1998 White Paper on Local Government. The latter was a bold and necessary step in South Africa's democratic journey. Its main aim was to redefine and establish municipalities as development engines capable of delivering basic services and driving social and economic development. Yet, as the past 27 years have shown, its assumptions and prescriptions have not fully aligned with the complex realities facing municipalities and their residents. The persistent failures of local government are not merely technical glitches; they reflect deeper structural, financial and governance challenges. Therefore, a critical review of the White Paper is not just a bureaucratic exercise but a matter of urgent national importance. For millions of people, municipalities determine whether they have water, electricity, decent roads and a healthy and dignified life. They are the foundation upon which inclusive development, social justice and democratic legitimacy rest. A central problem facing local government is the widespread failure to deliver basic services consistently. Many are financially distressed and some argue this distress is rooted in the very assumptions and structural arrangements articulated in the Revenue One key assumption was that municipalities would be able to raise enough revenue to fund the bulk of their operational expenditures. It was anticipated that municipalities would finance 90% of their recurrent costs, including salaries, repairs, maintenance and other daily operating expenses, using their own revenue streams, such as property rates and service charges. In other words, the remaining 10% would be funded by national transfers. This assumption underpinned the funding model for local government. It implied a local government model that is financially self-sufficient and capable of meeting its constitutional developmental mandates. But years of evidence have shown that this model was overly optimistic — if not fundamentally flawed. Municipalities in rural or economically marginalised areas struggle with their revenue collection because ratepayers can't or won't pay. The former is linked to high unemployment and poverty levels, while the latter could be attributed to administrative weaknesses. Apart from the metros, debt collection rate ranges from an average of between Many rely heavily on intergovernmental transfers that are insufficient to cover operational and capital needs. The over-reliance on property rates and service charges has also exposed deep inequalities, with wealthier urban municipalities faring better than rural municipalities that remain trapped in a cycle of underfunding and As such, the anticipated 90% self-funding benchmark is a structural revenue shortfall that remains elusive in many municipalities with cascading effects on service delivery, infrastructure maintenance, and overall governance. The inability to generate adequate revenue has direct consequences for service delivery. Countrywide, people face persistent water shortages, unreliable electricity supply, deteriorating roads, and poor waste management. Problems with governance It is no secret that many municipalities suffer from chronic governance problems, such as the lack of accountability, political instability and infighting, cadre deployment, poor consequence management, and skills shortages. Back in 1998, the White Paper envisaged professional, accountable local administrations; instead, many councils today are beset by instability, political interference and a lack of technical expertise. This undermines both strategic planning and day-to-day operations. The funding model has inadvertently entrenched spatial and economic inequalities. Affluent municipalities with a stronger revenue base can deliver better services and maintain their infrastructure, while poorer municipalities continue to lag further behind. This perpetuates the legacy of apartheid-era spatial planning and undermines the goals of equitable development and developmental local government. For the average person, the failures of local government are not abstract policy issues; they are realities that shape daily lives. In short, the effectiveness of local government is a 'litmus test' for the health of the country's democracy. When municipalities fail, people pay the price, and the consequences are immediate and profound: Dysfunctional municipalities deter investment, hinder local businesses and restrict job creation, thereby exacerbating poverty and inequality. Without reliable municipal services, people are forced to use unsafe water sources and makeshift sanitation, with dire health implications. Power outages, potholes and crumbling infrastructure disrupt livelihoods, hinder economic activity and erode public trust. Poor waste management and inadequate environmental health services expose people to disease and environmental hazards. When local government is seen as corrupt or incompetent, it undermines legitimacy and trust, social cohesion and fuels disillusionment with democracy itself. Differentiated approach It is clear that the White Paper must be comprehensively reviewed and reformed. This moment also creates an opportunity to rethink the local government funding model critically. A re-imagined national policy on developmental local government must take seriously the funding model that is supposed to bring it to life. A differentiated approach is needed, one that recognises the local government history, the diverse capacities and contexts of municipalities. This may require increased and better-targeted national transfers, especially for poorer municipalities, alongside innovative approaches to local revenue generation. Such approaches may typically include a review of the Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations Framework to pursue a truly equitable sharing and allocation of revenue raised nationally. Reforming local government through a revised White Paper must also be part of a broader strategy to address spatial and economic structural inequalities. This must include targeted investment in infrastructure, support for local economic development and measures to expand the municipal rate base over time. But improving municipal governance will require both political will and systemic reforms that seek to professionalise local government and strengthen oversight mechanisms to root out corruption. Appointing skilled, qualified officials — rather than prioritising comradeship or political loyalty — must become the norm. This will go a long way toward strengthening local governance and accountability. As we look to the future, we must learn from the past, confront uncomfortable truths, and forge a new consensus on municipalities' role, funding, and functioning. This will go a long way in ensuring that all municipalities are 'fit for purpose' and capable of addressing the ever-evolving needs for all effectively. Dr Lungelwa Kaywood is a local government specialist and postdoctoral fellow in the Chair in Urban Law and Sustainability Governance at the Faculty of Law at Stellenbosch University.
Mail & Guardian
19-06-2025
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
South Africans believe the country is ‘headed in the wrong direction', survey shows
Out of line: A study by the Human Sciences Research Council for the Electoral Commission of South Africa found that 79% of respondents think the country is 'headed in the wrong direction' while less than two-thirds were 'satisfied' with democracy. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy A new study shows that most South Africans are sceptical about the country and want more transparency about political funding and donors This content is restricted to subscribers only . Join the M&G Community Our commitment at the Mail & Guardian is to ensure every reader enjoys the finest experience. Join the M&G community and support us in delivering in-depth news to you consistently. Subscription enables: - M&G community membership - independent journalism - access to all premium articles & features - a digital version of the weekly newspaper - invites to subscriber-only events - the opportunity to test new online features first Already a subscriber?
Mail & Guardian
16-06-2025
- General
- Mail & Guardian
(Re)centre youths in city planning
Urban jungle: Cities in South Africa are not geared towards making life easy for young people, particularly those who are looking for work. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy The For example, in South Africa, youth (defined as ages 15 to 35) make up just over Despite young people making up a significant demographic in cities, youth are often excluded from policy and decision-making processes. Furthermore they are more vulnerable to some of the most acute problems that have come with urbanisation such as unemployment, poverty and violence. For instance, according to the most recent As 16 June, South Africa's national youth day, approaches, we should reflect on how we can do better for young people and, more specifically, how our cities can be (re)designed to address some of the key challenges that young people face. Specifically in the context of One of the most difficult issues since 1994, for instance, was how to incorporate townships and informal settlements into the formal functions of the city, not just from a service delivery point of view but also from a developmental one. Consider Cape Town. Forced removals, prohibitively high property prices and ineffective transport (and other) policies have A 2022 YouthCapital Urban planning and spatial design can directly address some of these issues by designing and implementing policies that are centred on empowerment, supporting and improving information and communication technology to reduce the need to travel, and to cut travel costs through better designed public transport infrastructure. Outside of looking for jobs, the spatial design and layout of a city can also be used to promote the development of small businesses and entrepreneurship. This is particularly relevant in the South African context as the informal economy accounted for This sector is a key opportunity for local governments to support and facilitate youth entrepreneurship. In light of this, not only is urban planning important for youth in job creation but also for enhancing youth entrepreneurship. Last, urban and spatial design is important for improving and supporting people's As a result, centring youth But the urban experience is often marred by a complex set of issues that intersect across social, economic and historical lines. This has made cities increasingly unfriendly towards young people, especially for the most marginalised. Therefore, there needs to be a greater emphasis on making cities more inclusive and community orientated. Scholarship on Community is important especially when looking to make cities more friendly, because it creates a sense of belonging and support, which can help young people stand against destructive activities such as gangsterism. While these are just a few ways of centring youth in the conversation about urban planning and development, it highlights a crucial need for more inclusiveness in urban policy. Over the past two decades, a number of urban policies and frameworks have been introduced and revised, but there seems to be a misalignment about who these policies are for. Perhaps it's time to rethink who we want to build cities for and what we want our cities to be. Stuart Morrison is a data analyst in the Governance Insights and Analytics team at Good Governance Africa.
Mail & Guardian
13-06-2025
- Climate
- Mail & Guardian
Dry humour isn't funny
Dribs and drabs: Suburbs in the east of Joburg have spent eight days and counting without water. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy It is early on Monday morning and I wake to the sound of a rumble of thunder and a flash of lightning. This is followed by the unmistakable sound of raindrops on the roof. The promised cold front has arrived. Ignoring the icy cold I leap out of bed and rush outside barefoot to check that my primitive water collection system is in place. The old plastic rubbish bin and the vintage zinc bathtub have to be positioned correctly to catch the maximum amount of water running down from my leaking gutters. The reason for this frantic early morning activity is that our suburb is one of the many that have been affected by the ongoing water crisis. The east of Joburg has been particularly badly hit recently and I have not had water for at least eight days since the one day where there was a weak trickle from the taps. Before that there was no water for three or four days at a time and when there was water it was switched off at night in what Joburg Water terms 'throttling'. This violent-sounding nocturnal activity is to allow our much-abused reservoir to recover and fill to a level where at least some areas can get some water the next day. The result of this situation is that my vast collection of five-litre plastic bottles that I spent the summer months filling with rainwater has been depleted and flushing the toilet is becoming a problem. An attack by a nasty stomach bug that required multiple toilet flushings didn't help. So the unseasonal rainfall was perfectly timed but unfortunately it didn't last long and a pathetic amount of water was collected. Disconsolately I go back inside and check that there is enough water in the kettle for a cup of coffee, making sure to divert my eyes from the counter piled high with dirty dishes, pots, cutlery, glasses and mugs. To do the washing-up requires a visit to a friend's house to collect multiple bottles of water. Back home I must heat up water in the kettle and in pots on the stove to clear the unsavoury mess in the kitchen. Grudgingly I fill the dogs' water bowl while delivering a stern lecture on their reckless water consumption. I pour a small glass of water to wash down my blood pressure pills and make sure there is enough left to rinse after brushing my teeth. It is time for the first news diary meeting of the week and once again I tell my colleagues how lucky they are that this is a remote meeting and none of them have to be confined in a small office space with me. A daily shower in the morning is a distant memory so personal hygiene standards have dropped. There is a discussion about how the water crisis is a major story and we have to cover it. But we have done this so many times before that the problem is how to present it in a different way that will make people want to read it. There is no easy solution to this problem so I return to the kitchen in the hope that there is enough water in the kettle for a second cup of coffee. Like a moth to a flame I check on the Water Crisis: Time for Action WhatsApp group. There are 109 new messages, mostly from people saying that there is still no water in their street. There is a map with a growing red line marking the areas that don't have water. There are messages filled with angry words in capital letters. There are plans to hold protests and to visit the offices of those responsible for this shocking lack of basic services. There are many posts about the whereabouts of the elusive water tankers, and many pictures of people filling up containers. The unusual sight of people pushing wheelbarrows filled with plastic bottles down the tree-lined suburban streets has become a familiar one. And there are alarming stories about how air being pushed through the pipes keeps your meter ticking over even though there is no water. In among all this I come across an official statement: 'Today, MMC Jack Sekwaila conducted a site inspection at the Alexandra Park Reservoir with Johannesburg water officials, including Ops GM Mzakhwe Mtshweni. The visit formed part of the city's efforts to accelerate water recovery in affected areas and assess the condition of critical pipeline infrastructure. During the inspection, severe blockages were discovered — caused by illegal dumping, vandalism, and misuse of underground systems. In a concerning development, some underground chambers are being accessed and used as shelter by unhoused individuals, highlighting a deeper human and infrastructure crisis.' In desperate need of distraction I page through a cookery book looking for a new one-pot recipe to make for supper. Perhaps a hearty minestrone soup that the family can spoon from the communal pot. I need to shop for ingredients and the trip to the supermarket takes me down one of the main streets of the suburb. For more than a month it has been reduced to one lane by a series of large craters, the result of ongoing work to repair several sewage pipe leaks. It is not surprising to see nasty grey-green water bubbling up from a new hole in the road. The good news is that I have a gas stove to cook the meal on because there is another fault at the local substation and the power is out. At this stage it is like water off a duck's back.
Mail & Guardian
04-05-2025
- Science
- Mail & Guardian
Nature is dead. Nature remains dead. And we have killed it
Deluded : Our belief in our superiority over other life forms is a mistake; we destroy the natural world with our 'intelligence'. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy One of the most well-known quotes by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche begins with the statement, 'God is dead,' from his 1882 work, The Gay Science. Quoted at length it reads: 'God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?' A reading of the quote suggests that an analogy can be drawn between the 'God' Nietzsche refers to and the current degraded state of nature. Simply substituting the word 'God' with 'nature' underscores the severity of the present environmental crisis. 'God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?' In a similar vein, nature is dead. Nature remains dead. And we have killed it. The environmental crisis we face today is one in which, through our daily actions, we continue to inflict profound harm on the natural world. The cumulative effect of human activity on the environment, now termed the Anthropocene, can be traced back to the early periods of 'civilisation' and industrialisation. In other words, since those times, humanity has been — and continues to be — responsible for the death of nature. Despite numerous calls to action and a growing body of work by environmental philosophers and activists, only modest progress has been made, and much more remains to be desired. We are all complicit in this death. 'How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?' Too often, we attempt to console ourselves by adopting seemingly sustainable lifestyles, while ignoring the deeper structures that perpetuate environmental destruction. By structures here, I refer to, among others, capitalism and patriarchy. The persistent failure to implement effective environmental policies — either to avoid disrupting 'development' (capitalism) or to preserve the interests of a privileged few, predominantly white, heterosexual, male elites (patriarchy) — testifies to our collective unwillingness to confront the root causes of environmental degradation. We busy ourselves with addressing symptoms rather than the structural causes we are reluctant to face. This highlights the superficial comfort we derive from 'doing something towards mitigation', even as the foundations of the crisis remain intact. 'What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?' There is little doubt that nature is the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has ever possessed. No matter how humans attempt to justify their status as 'masters of the universe' — whether through intellectual capacity or advances in science and technology — none of these so-called achievements would have been possible without nature. We depend on nature not only for our basic sustenance but also for the resources that enable our scientific and technological advancements. Without nature, we are nothing. Yet, time and again, we focus on traits we value in our own species and extrapolate from them a supposed superiority over the rest of the natural world. We rarely cite, for instance, the keen vision of an eagle as evidence that the eagle is superior to humans, or the incredible speed of a cheetah as proof that the cheetah is greater than us. Instead, we highlight intelligence — a trait we prize within our own species — and from this narrow vantage point, proclaim ourselves better than the wider natural world, of which we are but a small — and often highly destructive — part. I recognise that the analysis I offer here is a simplified account compared to the more nuanced debates in the broader literature on human superiority over nature. Nevertheless, it serves to illustrate the deep-seated bias we harbour as a species: a bias that blinds us to the consequences of our actions, to our own ultimate detriment in the grand order of things. The knives with which we continue to bleed nature are the very structures we uphold as emblems of our so-called civilisation: patriarchy and capitalism. These structures, along with other forms of systemic oppression — various 'isms' often used to justify the exploitation of both marginalised peoples and the natural world — are entrenched as markers of 'development' or 'progress', making them difficult to challenge or dismantle. 'What water is there for us to clean ourselves?' This is where theories such as deep ecology, social ecology, ecofeminism and ecowomanism become crucial. These frameworks challenge us to recognise that social and ecological justice are fundamentally intertwined. They illuminate the reality that the same structures which sustain social injustices among humans are also responsible for the ongoing injustice inflicted upon nature — and vice versa. Thus, if we are to cleanse ourselves of our transgressions against the Earth, we must also work to dismantle the systems that perpetuate social injustice. 'What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?' This question evokes the growing movement within environmental philosophy to seek non-Western approaches to mitigating environmental degradation and promoting sustainability. The dominant, Western-centric models for addressing environmental crises are largely rooted in environmental science. But scientific approaches, while valuable, can be limited, because they often rely on controlled experiments that fail to capture the unpredictable and complex realities of environmental degradation as it occurs in the world. This is where art — and particularly the art forms embedded in non-Western traditions — offers crucial contributions to the discourse on environmental crisis mitigation and sustainability. Many non-Western approaches to environmental stewardship are grounded in generations of lived experience with nature as it truly is, passed down through oral traditions, songs, dances, taboos, totems and other artistic expressions. Yet, these forms of ecological knowledge have often been marginalised by science and technology, and many are now at risk of being lost forever. Because these ways of knowing are born from long-term, direct experience with the natural world, they hold insights and wisdom that could prove invaluable in the struggle against environmental degradation. It is imperative that we recognise, preserve and learn from these traditions rather than allowing them to be silenced in the name of progress. 'Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?' Every day, headlines celebrate new scientific achievements: a successful cloning here, a breakthrough in life extension there, and elsewhere, experiments exploring the fusion of human and machine to enhance human capabilities. While these are remarkable feats, they seem to miss a crucial point. If the essence of human life is merely to persist — regardless of its quality — then perhaps such advancements are sufficient. But what would life be without the healing presence of non-human nature? In our relentless pursuit of greatness — striving to become godlike — we have neglected what truly sustains and enriches us. A Native American proverb offers a sobering warning: 'Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught and the last stream poisoned, will we realise we cannot eat money.' I therefore conclude: Nature is dead. Nature remains dead. And we have killed it. In our striving to transcend the limits of our humanity, we have forsaken the very foundation upon which our existence depends. In our pursuit to become gods, we have severed ourselves from the sacred web of life, forgetting that our greatness is meaningless in a barren and broken world. The death of nature is not merely an ecological event — it is a profound existential crisis, a mirror reflecting the collapse of the human spirit itself. Until we recognise that our fate is inextricably bound to the fate of the Earth, all our triumphs will be hollow victories. In the end, the question remains: if we have killed what was holiest and mightiest among us, what is left within us worth saving? Emmanuel Anoghena Oboh is a PhD student of philosophy at the Centre of Applied Ethics at Stellenbosch University.
