THE word municipality has become synonymous with rampant corruption, poor service delivery, theft, fraud and nepotism.

This reveals the sickness ravaging our municipalities and killing our society.

Who is responsible for this malaise and why?

In any reputable organisation prospective employees would be subjected to background checks prior to being appointed.

This is done to check, among other things, criminal records, pending investigations or whether they had been dismissed from previous jobs.

This is premised on the notion that anyone who has been found guilty of any crime or accused of fraud or corruption in the past is likely to repeat the same. But our municipalities seem to be the only places where these background checks don't apply.

This crisis can be attributed to a number of factors- the main problem being the country's political system. Nomination processes are characterised by obscure practices that have proved to have anachronistic effects on these very important public institutions.

The rank and file are not persuaded but rather press-ganged to nominate particular individuals for selfish reasons.

If this is truly about leadership, why do well-known nincompoops in the community, who can neither read nor write, fight so hard to have their names in the candidate lists?

Can we really expect somebody whose nomination was dishonest to be honest once elected a councillor?

The system is so weak that anyone who could not make a living elsewhere in life sees it as an opportunity to become a councillor. Once they realise they have failed in life they go back to their communities and embark on a howling process and disrupt community meetings to gain recognition.

The louder they howl the better their chances are of being nominated. It is important to note that the majority of them have never worked, while others had been living through illegitimate means that clearly fit the description of a "lumpenproletariat".

If Karl Marx's reference to the lumpenproletariat as the "dangerous class" and counter-revolutionary is anything to go by, South Africa is in a very serious crisis.

This class of people, once elected, become lumpencouncillors. Instead of prioritising service delivery they put more effort into how they can swell the ranks of the municipalities with their former counterparts.

Once that is achieved they focus on how the looting strategies can be fine-tuned to avoid detection.

Through companies owned by and linked to their close relatives they begin to amass wealth through illegitimately awarded tenders. At the same time officials are daily encouraged to enhance revenue generation so the lumpencouncillors can have something to prey on.

In the process, talented officials who refuse to obey the illegal and uninformed instructions of the lumpencouncillors are victimised.

Unless something is done, our municipalities will continue to be led by shoddy characters.

To put an end to this it is important that political parties put in place measures that will ensure their candidates are of good standing. To complement this the government should pass legislation that will compel municipal managers to conduct such checks before any councillor's name is added to their payroll.

This will, perhaps, bring about a society in which, as Prince Mashele in his book The Death of Our Society, observes: "People would reject the lies of the latter-day political entrepreneurs who use history to market themselves. (This would be) an ideal society where ordinary voters would not understand why a fool or an uneducated person should be voted into office."

Perhaps the time is now for South Africans to stand up and ensure there is no place for lumpencouncillors.

• Dikgare is director at Triangulation Security Advisory Services