THIS SPEECH WAS DELIVERED BY GOOD MEMBER OF THE WESTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL PARLIAMENT BRETT HERRON, IN THE WESTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL PARLIAMENT TODAY.
27 May 2021
Speaker…
There’s something very odd going on in the Western Cape. If left untreated it will spread across the country, with profoundly negative effects on the principles of state accountability to citizens.
Over the past six months, instead of answering written questions relating to governance in Cape Town, the MEC for Local Government has taken to responding on behalf of the City that the questions are effectively none of my business.
According to MEC Bredell, the City says it does not have to answer to the province. By simply passing on this message, the MEC appears to agree with the City’s strategy to avoid accountability.
We have done some research, looking at questions relating to municipalities posed by Members of Parliament and the country’s Provincial Legislatures.
We found dozens of questions – and replies.
Most of the questions were posed by members of the opposition.
In the National Assembly, for example, between May 2019 and April 2020 DA MPs asked 35 questions about operations and decisions taken by municipalities across the country – all of which received answers of one kind or another.
But the Western Cape and City of Cape Town – where the DA leads – appear to have engaged in a Faustian pact to stonewall scrutiny.
As far as we can find, the only Minister or MEC in the country that is unable or unwilling to answer parliamentary questions is our MEC for Local Government, Minister Bredell.
And as far as we can see, the only Municipality in the country that is refusing to answer questions is the City of Cape Town.
Speaker…
Let’s avoid this debate devolving into a technical discussion about powers and duties under the Constitution and/or various legislation.
It is more important than that. It’s about whether this government believes in service, transparency and accountability.
The real question is: What right does a government have to withhold information from the public it taxes and is meant to serve?
If this Province and City refuse to be held accountable, their truancy will infect the rest of the country.
In whose benefit will it be for no municipalities to have to account to anyone besides their own?
Surely we all know by now that transparency and accountability deficiencies are the jet-fuel of corruption and maladministration?
Speaker…
Allow me to conclude by quoting from a document you might recognise:
“The government is accountable to the people.
Its purpose is to enable the South African people to use their freedoms.
It has no power except that which is assigned to it by the people and the Constitution.
The government must reflect the will of the people and our elected representatives must be directly accountable to the people.
Those to whom we entrust our nation’s highest offices have a sacred duty to live up to that trust;
Government must always act honestly, transparently and in the best interests of all South Africans.”
This is what we are debating today. Accountable government that is elected to serve and not be served.
The MEC and leadership of the City of Cape Town might recognise those words, too, because they are part of what the DA calls its official “Values and Principles”.
Earlier this year I wrote to Minister Bredell to object to his failure to respond to my questions.
The Minister set out a lengthy explanation, citing all the different laws and sections which basically claim the autonomy of a municipal council as a separate sphere of government which can exercise executive and legislative authority.
This is not in dispute.
The Minister wrote to me that the Provincial Executive’s duty to monitor and support municipalities “cannot be interpreted to the extent of providing provincial government with the authority to impede on the autonomy of municipalities”.
The Minister confuses monitoring, accountability and transparency with impeding.
Asking questions is how monitoring, accountability and transparency is conducted.
Asking a question, which must be answered cannot be impeding in a municipal council’s legislative and executive authority.
Nothing in a question impedes the municipal council from exercising its authority.
The question invariably asks about the manner in which that authority has already been exercised.
The question does, however hold a democratically elected government to account for the exercise of that power.
And this is where the Minister’s argument starts to unravel.
No government is above being held to account. And no government is an island.
Lets start with Sec 41 of the Constitution which requires all spheres of government to cooperate with one another.
This is carried through to Sec 3 of the Municipal Systems Act which, whilst acknowledging the executive and legislative authority of a municipal council, still requires that council to exercise their authority within the constitutional system of co-operative government.
Sec 154 of the Constitution makes provision for co-operative government between municipalities and national and provincial governments and Sec 155(7) of the Constitution makes it absolutely clear that the national government and the provincial governments have the legislative and executive authority to see to the effective performance by municipalities of their functions by regulating the exercise by municipalities of their executive authority.
The failure in this province is the Minister.
He has failed to implement an effective mechanism to give effect to his duty to support and monitor the Western Cape Municipal Councils as he was obliged to do in terms Sec 155 (6) of the Constitution and Sec 105 of the Municipal Systems Act.
The Minister’s 2014 Western Cape Monitoring and Support of Municipalities Act is simply lame.
Sec 105 (3) of the Municipal Systems Act specifically empowers the MEC to may make reasonable requests to municipalities for additional information.
The Minister is in breach of his constitutional obligations.
And the City of Cape Town is a city gone rogue.