Extract from Manifesto by Songezo Zibi

Page 138 to Page 141

Provinces and municipalities

Section 103 of the Constitution divides South Africa into nine provinces, marking a departure from the four provinces that were previously in place before 1994. Schedule 1A of the Constitution includes a map showing the boundaries of the provinces. These may be changed by constitutional amendment.

Simply put, provincial authorities operate very much like the national government system, except that their powers are subservient to those of either the National Assembly or the national government. Similarly, municipal councils fall under the oversight of the provincial government, typically the Member of Executive Council (MEC) responsible for co-operative governance.

Section 100 of the Constitution gives the national government the power to take over specific functions of a provincial administration, following a presidential proclamation. The reasons may include but are not limited to “maintaining essential national standards, national security, economic unity or preventing that province from acting against the interests of another province or the country as a whole”.

Where nationally we have the National Assembly, the provinces have legislatures in which Members of the Provincial Legislature (MPL) take the role of MPs. Instead of a National Council of Provinces, they have the House of Traditional Leaders. The provincial equivalent of a minister is an MEC. Effectively, we have some of the national governance architecture repeated in each province.

Theoretically, provinces are supposed to bring government closer to the people, and municipal councils closer still, but there remain many problems that cannot be resolved without making the system more cumbersome than it already is. For instance, our MPs are not directly elected by the people through electoral districts; as a result, consulting with and hearing from constituents is hardly meaningful. In some instances, an MP will be allocated a constituency that is hundreds of kilometres from where they live, which means the residents usually don’t even know the person.

The same is true for provincial legislatures. Most people do not know how to interact with this three-sphere system at all. They are often much closer to their municipal councillors, with whom they are sometimes on instant messaging on their phones. The downside for councillors is that they are often asked to resolve issues that belong in the provincial or national spheres, sometimes under the pain of violent protest, without much recourse. I propose that we consider a constitutional amendment that would abolish provinces altogether. Instead, they would be replaced by municipal and administrative districts, each with an allocation of MPs contingent on the size of the district population. There are several reasons for this proposal.

First, this would be part of a broader attempt to bring national legislative and government matters closer to the people to deepen democratic participation. Earlier I wrote about the need to reduce the hold that political parties and party chiefs have over MPs and MPLs by electing MPs directly. This would ensure that they consider the views and choices of their constituents much more than they do now.

The electoral district boundaries would be located within existing municipal boundaries, and the number of electoral districts allocated would be according to population size. This means that Gauteng, which is geographically the smallest province but has a high population relative to its size, would get more electoral districts than the Free State province, for example.

Secondly, the mandate of local authorities would be expanded to include a co-operative governance system in which they have limited oversight on matters that are currently almost exclusively national competencies, such as community safety and law enforcement.

Currently, the area commissioners of the South African Police Service and directors of public prosecutions have no accountability whatsoever to local authorities. This would change because under the system I propose, a district’s priorities must include the full social and economic infrastructure required to create a just, thriving society and communities. That means the district government’s strategies must include, among others, law enforcement, prioritisation of certain crimes by prosecutors, basic education and the arts.

This approach will bring accountability for most issues that have an impact on people’s lives much closer to the authorities they have voted into positions of political responsibility. The constitution of municipal councils would also be amended to include “co-operative sessions” where MPs would take up non-voting seats in council during recess, in which they get to report to local authorities about developments in parliament.

In turn, together with the relevant MEC members, the MPs would hold town-hall meetings in various communities, thus providing an integrated report to communities across the district. While it may be difficult to physically get to every community, the proliferation of digital platforms means that these sessions can be moderated in such a way that residents are able to listen to or watch live streams of the events.

There is an added advantage to this regionalised system, which is that, for the first time, people would get an opportunity to engage with national and local issues at once and on a regular basis. The discussions would almost always be held in the local language, thereby expanding democratic participation.