South Africa is in the process of reviewing its local government system. The process is about reviewing the White Paper on Local Government. This is a document that made policy assumptions from which the ‘Big Five’ local government legislations were enacted: the Municipal Structures Act, the Municipal Systems Act, the Municipal Finance Management Act, and the Municipal Property Rates Act.


The 1998 White Paper represented post-apartheid South Africa’s fundamental departure from the local government ordinances that structured the spatial injustices of the past. It articulated a vision of South Africa as enshrined in the 1996 Constitution; a legal expression of the post-apartheid liberation promise. The promise for local government is captured in Chapter 7 of the Constitution, which the 1998 White Paper expanded upon.


Like any policy conceptualised in a transformation-intensive and transitionocratic context, the 1998 White Paper assumptions were never expected to be ‘until Jesus comes back policy prescriptions’. While the post-1994 government process made every care to ensure policy timelessness, apartheid as a policy was too sophisticated and big a policy construct to have its templates dealt with by a single shot of assumptions. The complexity of local government could not even be conclusively dealt with at the constitutional negotiations, as it required the 1996 Constitution as its ideological point of departure.


As at the announcement of the LG White Paper, South Africa had 857 municipal jurisdictions, many of which perpetuated apartheid spatial planning and settlements. The sheer reduction of these to present-day 257 municipal jurisdictions and … community representation guaranteeing wards indicate the complexities that went into those assumptions.


The apex complexity was the demarcation of the whole of the territory of South Africa into wall-to-wall municipal jurisdiction. This assumption brought into the municipality’s fold all households and firms, including South Africa’s two least talked-about 10th and 11th provinces of the Kruger National Park and Marine Coastal Region.


The departure from ordinances was also about the entrenched status of local government as a distinct, though not autonomous, yet interrelated and interdependent sphere in a cooperative government system. The LG White Paper and the legislation that came out of it recognised the distinctiveness of the political mandates each of the 257 municipal jurisdictions would be carrying. It was the public power and public function character of municipalities as organs of the broader South African state that differentiated them from previous ones.


There were therefore assumptions that would ordinarily follow the policy intents of legislation. The ongoing review process is about revisiting those assumptions. For instance, at the time of crafting the 1998 White Paper, the post-liberation euphoria and an imposing Mandela reconciliation dividend could not have anticipated the complexities of the coalition government.


The assumption of property ratings as a source of revenue did not factor in land in traditional leadership authority jurisdictions and urbanisation-driven informal settlements. The full implications of the obligations imposed on the state and its economic capacity to respond have yet to be calculated and compared to per capita GDP contributions of all those who live in South Africa; we the people.


The local government white paper review process is the mother of all government reform initiatives. Firms live in one municipal jurisdiction or another; they experience the day-to-day impact of good government through the local state. The stability of the triad of human and firm settlements, and the services of water, energy, and public infrastructure, depends on a capable local state. Businesses should start taking an interest in how the review process is unfolding.