Labour federation Cosatu on Monday laid the blame for the crumbling and poor state of local government squarely at the feet of its ally the ANC, accusing it of presiding over decay and corruption in the municipalities it governs.
In what can be seen as a major shift in the country’s political landscape, the federation, a key ANC ally in the tripartite alliance, said it had grown disillusioned with the ANC’s track record.
The federation, which boasts 1.5-million members, has always availed its grassroots structures to campaign for the ANC in local, provincial and national elections.
It is holding its national elective congress in Midrand, Johannesburg, from Monday to Thursday.
Political pundits and opposition parties are keenly awaiting a resolution on which political party the federation will back at the November 4 local government elections.
Its other ally, the SACP, which also used to throw its weight behind the ANC, has registered to compete in the elections, bewildered by the ANC’s market-friendly policies that are seeing the private sector playing a bigger role in the running of public entities.
In its political report, Cosatu said many municipalities countrywide were in a poor state.
Most ANC-led municipalities are “collapsing or on the brink of collapse, with many facing collapsing water, electricity and roads, with municipal services grinding to a halt, denying communities basic services and the dignity of citizenship” the report said.
“Growing numbers of municipalities cannot even pay municipal workers, with volatile workplace strife across the country.”
Local government audit outcomes for the 2024/25 have shown that of the 257 municipalities, only 39 achieved clean audits — down from 41 in the previous period (2023/24).
“While the ANC manifesto for the 2021 local government elections provided numerous improvements as proposed commitments to turn around many collapsing municipal governments, approaches taken by the ANC after the elections produced more weaknesses, more decay and corruption.”
Among its other complaints, Cosatu has expressed discontent after it was excluded from a business-government partnership aimed at addressing economic growth and job creation in the country.
Cosatu said there were serious problems with how money was allocated to municipalities. Resources were not shared fairly, leaving wealthy metropolitan suburbs better developed while black townships and poor rural municipalities continued to struggle with underdevelopment and inequality.
“Besides crises of collapse in municipalities caused by poor governance, the current funding model for local government continues to create conditions that only produce funding challenges for municipalities, especially in poor (mostly historically black) communities,” the report stated.
Cosatu said the revenue crisis at local government was also compounded by “deliberate nonpayment of municipal infrastructure by provincial and, at times, national government, with municipal towns being owed billions of rand by provincial and national government departments”.
“This nonpayment practice continues to compromise municipalities’ revenue collection, as they are also not able to enforce revenue collection among private sector businesses and poor communities when the provincial and national government departments with budgets fail to honour their municipal obligations.”
The crisis in local government, Cosatu said, was also exacerbated by the politics of “thuggery and primitive accumulation, as politically linked and protected tendering syndicates sabotage state infrastructure to induce tenders to provide services that should be provided by the state”.
In July, the National Treasury temporarily withheld the July equitable share payments to 69 failing municipalities across all nine provinces to enforce fiscal discipline, in a move seen as targeting rampant financial mismanagement, unauthorised and wasteful expenditure, failure to pay bulk suppliers like Eskom, failure to pay mandatory third-party deductions in pension funds and the SA Revenue Service, and the adoption of unfunded budgets.
“The federation supports the position of SA Municipal Workers Union on this decision, characterising this decision as collective punishment that will only hurt communities and workers in affected municipalities.
Municipal maladministration
“In our view, National Treasury, while addressing an authentic challenge and problems of municipal maladministration and failure of municipalities to apply consequence management and prosecution of those involved in the fleecing of the public purse, collective punishment will only negatively affect already desperate communities and workers,” Cosatu said.
The federation is not without its own challenges too, the report said. Several of its affiliates have been haemorrhaging membership across the public and private sectors.
Leadership wrangles in the federation and in its affiliates have bedevilled the unions. One such wrangle manifested itself at the conference on Monday. Much of the first day’s programme was eaten up by a lack of clarity on the membership status of its first deputy president, Mike Shingange.
Shingange, who is alleged to be vying for the federation’s presidency, was suspended recently, but the federation had not issued a formal communication confirming it.
He is alleged to have filled in nomination forms for the federation’s presidency despite the suspension.
Some affiliates, including the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), refused to hand over their lists of delegates, demanding the congress first clarify Shingange’s status at the conference.
Business Day reliably understands Nehawu suspended Shingange for defying the affiliate’s instruction not to enter the race. He refused to comment when approached.
A special Cosatu central executive committee, mandated by the congress, sat on Monday afternoon to examine the issue of credentials and Shingange’s eligibility to contest. By 7pm the meeting was still proceeding.
Shingange’s union, the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu), is the largest critic of the ANC government’s policies, mainly its participation in the Government of National Unity (GNU) and its privatisation drive.
Business Day