President Cyril Ramaphosa expressed concern about the destructive phenomenon of red tape in government and its impact on service-delivery and economic development in his state of the nation address in 2022.

“There are too many regulations in this country that are unduly complicated, costly and difficult to comply with. This prevents companies from growing and creating jobs. We are therefore working to improve the business environment for companies of all sizes through a dedicated capacity in the Presidency to reduce red tape,” said the president.

All countries need some form of regulations and bureaucracy as part of their administration architecture but such systems should not stand in the way of efficiency where service-delivery and economic development are concerned. In our context as a developmental state in particular our local government ecosystem must be free of regulatory impediments that stand in the way of development.

One of the biggest challenges we are facing as a country is that we have a high failure rate of SMMEs which is a very bad situation, given the high levels of unemployment and poverty we are contending with. Sadly, it is mainly young people, especially black youth, who are on the receiving end of this anomaly.

According to the 2013 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report, compared to other emerging economies, our entrepreneurship rates remain very low with legal and regulatory frameworks flagged as being partly responsible for this.

As I point out above, all countries have some form of legal and regulatory machinery as part of ensuring governance order and avoiding anarchy. In our context, red tape locates itself around a number of areas that include administrative and procedural delays; government staff time to receive and process forms; inspection of premises by designated officials and fines for confiscated or destroyed goods among others.

All of these factors become burdensome on those starting or operating small businesses and they sometimes lead to despair and closure.

What this situation points to is a need for agility in our administrative and governance on the part of those who run the system, especially officials in local government and how they interface with their provincial and national counterparts. Some of the areas where we find legal and regulatory requirements are in functions that are the competence of both local and provincial governments and this makes it crucial that there is synergy between these two spheres of government.

What we see sometimes is that because of insufficient training or poor resourcing those who are on the local government sphere of government are unable to handle the regulatory function and thus leading to long delays in processing paperwork.

There are, however, different ways in which we can reduce this red tape in local government particularly as part of a short-term strategy to unlock opportunities and create a thriving environment for business and other positive social activities to take place.

Firstly, municipal councillors and their management teams have to sharply look at the entire regulatory regime and urgently deal with those areas that are simply nonsensical, archaic and can be done away with. Secondly and perhaps most importantly, municipalities have to redesign legal and regulatory regimes that are suited for the future.

The business-as-usual approach is simply not working and there are bureaucratic entanglements that our municipalities have to be freed from if we are to change our national growth and development trajectory.

Lastly, there is an importance for training and re-orientation for those who administer the system, especially officials. 

They are the cog that connects the municipal councils with communities and other stakeholders such as investors and businesses. What the officials need to understand is that it is now no longer about being able to provide water, collect refuse, patch-up potholes or cut grass. Developmental local government is about more than the ability to do all these things. It is about unlocking opportunities for residents so that they can be able to stand on their own and in turn contribute to the long-term sustainability of their own municipalities. The starting point however is doing away with unnecessary red tape that hampers service-delivery and eats up the revenue.     

• Hadebe is a local government social impact and behaviour-change consultant