ANC PLAN WILL CAUSE LOCAL GOVERNMENT CHAOS FOR GAUTENG

MEC Humphrey Mmemezi's mind boggling statements yesterday that Gauteng will only consist of 5 municipalities by 2016 and it will inherit the notorious Balfour area predicts chaos for local government in the province (see New Age report).

The ANC's obsession with centralization in order to solve its internal problems and lack of capacity in local municipalities will cost Gauteng dearly in the long run.

The fact is that only 0,3% (R98,5m) of the Gauteng provincial budget is allocated to the local government department of which 80,2% (R79m) is spent on a defunct community development worker (CDW) programme. It then becomes clear that the province does not have the "billions" that the MEC referred to, to bail out or support municipalities in the province.

Local government should be close to the people it services. Creating more monstrous municipalities, like in the case of the new Tshwane metro, just makes local government more inaccessible to its citizens.

We need more small towns to govern themselves. The main reason these towns have not been operating as they should is due to fraud, corruption and mismanagement which are by-products of ANC cadre deployment. Otherwise these smaller municipalities would be able to run viable administrations.

This is evident in a municipality like Midvaal, south of Johannesburg, which is a municipality run by the DA. This municipality is well-managed and able to provide quality services under difficult circumstances to its residents while attracting billions of Rands in direct investment. If Midvaal could do it, all municipalities should be able to do it.

Statement issued by Fred Nel, MP. DA Gauteng spokesperson on local government, March 26 2011

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