The crisis of profligacy that has afflicted the provincial governments of Limpopo, Gauteng and Free State is not necessarily surprising.

Provincial administrations have always been run on a crisis basis. The reasons are there for all to see. The solutions are easy to find. But, these issues are politically too hot to tackle.

Provincial governments are run by incompetent deployees who use them as avenues to milk the state coffers. They even kill each other in the battle for the share of public resources. The deployees do not see their primary duty as that of serving citizens. They are there to practise the politics of the belly.

The national government, which in terms of the Constitution is obliged to intervene when governance crises set in in provinces, is itself incapable of providing leadership.

It too requires some intervention. Pity, there is no higher authority above President Jacob Zuma's cabinet.

It is ironic that some of the ministers who lead departments that have been in the news for wrong reasons are part of a campaign to rescue the provinces from total collapse.

It's a classic case of the blind leading the blind - with tragic consequences, if we consider the fact that in Limpopo civil servants were almost denied their salaries because of unrestrained expenditure.

Clearly, the constitutional injunction for the higher authority did not envisage that the higher authority itself would be found wanting.

The provincial tie of government has to be reconsidered.

It is clear that the taxpayer is not getting the value of money spent. The provincial legislatures are the worst of all white elephants. If the provincial governments were in trouble, the provincial legislatures should have been the first to know and take tougher action.

But even if there was a genuine will to do so, this would have been nullified by the politics of patronage. The ruling party has an established culture of kicking out those MPs who speak out against the profligacy of politicians under the guise of organisational discipline.

At face value the problem manifests itself in technical incompetence and financial management breakdowns, and tender rigging, among others.

It is actually a political problem. And the ruling ANC knows this. The party - by extension government - lacks the moral high ground to deal with it.

When Zuma intervened in the Eastern Cape he got a middle finger from local politicians. They didn't see his intervention as any different from what they have been doing.