cities

Section 51 of the Municipal Systems Act requires a municipality to be responsive, service oriented and
performance driven and to establish working political-administrative relationships and well-organised
and efficient delivery systems. These requirements are reinforced in most local government legislation,
including the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) (No. 56 of 2003), the Municipal Property
Rates Act (No. 6 of 2004) and the Division of Revenue Act, which annually sets the intergovernmental
fiscal transfers limits (de Visser, 2009). These Acts define the shape, form and functions of city governance.
A council led by an executive mayor governs the city. A speaker (elected by the council) chairs the
council, and a municipal manager (appointed by the council) runs the administration. Councils are
expected to plan, adopt policies and engage communities (de Visser, 2010a). The municipal executive
initiates policy, oversees the administration and takes regular decisions. Ward committees ensure formal
(but not substantive) community participation. The IDP, which is decided with local communities, enables
the coordination of the work of all three government spheres, while also including the private sector, civil
society and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Ward committees and stakeholder associations –
social workers, community-based organisations (CBOs), non-governmental organisations and other
resource persons – together make up the IDP Representative Forum.
Cities are at the coalface of participatory governance and transformation, and have to deal with a
regime of complex regulations, compliance requirements and policies, from land-use management
systems and environmental impact assessments, to public private partnerships (PPPs). Implementation
is immensely complex, given the spatial and long-term development planning demands, incentives and
regulatory frameworks, the redistributive rating systems and the restructured tax regimes that are all
needed to transform the historically skewed spatial delivery patterns of cities.
Although cities have set up the structures and systems required to adhere to the prescribed rule of
law, they have limited human and financial resources for implementing the complex laws, regulations
and demands. This can be seen in the challenges related to the devolution of housing and public
transport. The overload of national policy and legislative interventions has “the unintended
consequence of breeding instability and a lack of confidence in and among local government politicians,
practitioners and communities” (George and Baatjies, 2015: 16).
Figure 6.3: Strategies to accelerate transformation
2009
Local Government
Turnaround Strategy
2011
NDP Ch.13
Building a capable
and developmental
state
2013
Spatial Planning
and Land Use
Management Act
(SPLUMA)
2014
Back to Basics return
to compliance
2016
Integrated Urban
Development
Framework
206 State of South African Cities Report 2016