Problem
Key factors in assessing the state of local government in south Africa
Introduction
The growing occurrence of service delivery protests during the past few years has escalated this issue on the public agenda in South Africa. In this context, South Africa is moving towards the highest number of delivery-linked protests since 1994. Community related protests substantially increased as illustrated later in this article. Although the notion of politicallydriven protesting is generally accepted as the reason for the unrests at the local government level, the latter may not be predominant in their propensity to define the nature of the problem. According to research done by the University of Johannesburg (Grant 2014:1), high ranking grievances were primarily about service delivery: housing provision, water supply, sanitation, fair political representation in decision-making processes and electricity supply infrastructure (Grant 2014:1). Other issues include curbing of corruption, poor municipal administration and services, lack of or degradation of roads, growing unemployment trends, municipal boundaries and demarcation processes, land reform, basic health services and ever-increasing criminal activities also featured in the research. Service delivery protests have been characterised by mass protests, petitions, marches, public violence and destruction of facilities, and in some cases by the death of both police and protesters (Grant 2014:1). These violent incidents have urged South Africans to seriously consider the nature and underlying reasons for these protests, but placed the international spotlight on the nation, which has been singled out as one of the most violent and unequal countries in the world, and officially the 'protest capital' of the world (CSVR 2009). Growing incidents of protest-related violence as depicted in Table 1 is an indication that local government is continually and increasingly failing expectations of local inhabitants in several local authorities in South Africa. According to Powell (2012: 13), Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), Yunus Carrim, in 2010 already sounded a warning that "the rage of sections of the protestors and the extent of violence and destruction reflected a far more fundamental alienation of people from our democracy... and it suggests an acute sense of marginalisation and social exclusion". This was one of the first instances of an executive member of government publicly making a "direct political connection between the rise in violent protests and failure of developmental local government" in South Africa. According to Alexander (2012(a):1-2), there has been major service delivery protests between 2004 and 2012, and "in 2010/11 there was a record number of crowd management incidents (unrest and peaceful), and data for 2011/12 shows an even higher figure. Already, the number of gatherings involving unrest was higher in 2011/12 than any previous year. During these years, (2009-12), there has been an average of 2.9 unrest incidents per day. This is an increase of 40 percent over the average of 2.1 unrest incidents per day recorded for 2004-09. Statistics show that what has been called the Rebellion of the Poor has intensified" (Alexander 2012(b):1-2; Alexander and Pfaffe 2013:4-5). As the preceding description highlights service delivery protests by local communities, it has been emphasised by Managa (2012:2) that poor communication with communities, lack of transparency, poor governance, ineffective management, and political in-fighting, as well as unfulfilled promises were found to be major factors contributing to local protests. Some of the major causes cited in the State of Local Government in South Africa overview report, COGTA (2009[b]: 33) are lack of political leadership and will, implementation of public accountability, general skills scarcity, financial mismanagement, local economic development failure, corruption, lack of ensuring public participation and inability to plan, manage projects and deliver on the promises that placed councillors and senior municipal officials in power. Subban, M. and Wissink, H., 2015. Key factors in assessing the state of local government in South Africa. Crisis management or facing the realities of transformation. Administration Publica. 23(2). pp.33-56 Answer ALL the questions in this section.
Task
Discuss the key grievances and other issues that causes service delivery protests within the post-apartheid local government in South Africa.