DA Newsletter 21 May 2010

A new drive for centralised control

There is an ever-present danger that the better the DA does in elections, and the more we win power in various places, the more the ANC will use unconstitutional means to stop our progress.

We saw this happen in the ANC's repeated attempts to derail the City of Cape Town when the DA-led governing coalition took power in 2006. It is something we warned about before the last election, when the 17th Constitution Amendment Bill, designed to undermine the powers of municipalities, as well as the power of voters at local government level, first emerged.

If the warning lights were flickering amber back then, they have now changed to red. Ironically, the red light comes in the form of a draft Green Paper recently drawn up by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. A Green Paper is a draft policy document drawn up by government as the precursor to a change in the law.

The draft Green Paper seems innocuous enough at first glance. But, as I will make clear, if it becomes the policy of government, it will deal a serious body blow to our constitutional and democratic order.

The Green Paper correctly acknowledges the appalling state of service delivery and admits that government has serious capacity and coordination problems. It talks of the need for increased accountability and bemoans wasteful expenditure by the state.

This is all true - these are all problems that need to be urgently addressed in many places around the country. The questions are: What has led to this situation? How should it be fixed? And by whom?

If we get the diagnosis wrong, we will apply the wrong solution. This is the problem at the heart of the Green Paper. But I do not believe this is simply a question of misdiagnosis. The policy proposals are a thinly disguised attempt to centralize the ANC's power and undermine the progress that opposition parties are making at local and provincial level. The real intention is to stop the DA winning elections and implementing policy alternatives.

The Green Paper proposes a number of mechanisms to deal with the crisis of service delivery. They include:

• A long term development plan for the country driven by the National Planning Commission
• A single election for national, provincial and local government
• A national protocol for policy development
• A management authority within government as a single point for the movement of powers and functions across all three spheres of government
• A single national Act to govern the powers and functions of the three spheres of government
• Comprehensive framework legislation on provincial government to “clarify” the role of provinces and set indicators for provincial performance
• A National Cooperative Governance Forum to coordinate policy at a national level
• A single or “integrated” public service – across all three spheres – answerable to the national Department of Public Service and Administration
• A common set of “governance values” that all political parties must subscribe to.

What do these proposals have in common?

They are all underpinned by the assumption that centralized control and uniformity are inherently good and decentralization and diversity are inherently bad - a philosophy that runs counter to the spirit of our Constitution which is designed to disperse power. Where the document speaks of decentralization, it actually requires local and provincial government to act as an agency accountable to national government, not the voters.

There is nothing to suggest that centralized control will improve service delivery. Quite the contrary. Just look at Eskom and Home Affairs for the quintessential examples of service delivery failure. At least, if power is dispersed and different parties run various spheres of government, there is a chance of good service delivery in some places. Centralisation will mean universal failure.

So, if the Green Paper does not achieve its stated service delivery purpose, then what is it actually designed to do?

We can only draw one, inescapable conclusion: this Green Paper is not, in fact, about better governance and service delivery at all. It is about entrenching the ANC's power as it begins to lose elections at the local and provincial level. The purpose is to stop other parties from governing effectively, according to the mandate they have been given by voters in local and provincial elections.

In other words, its motives are primarily political.

This much is alluded to in the Green Paper itself. It says, revealingly: "…there is a need to improve cohesion within and between political parties, the executive, legislature and judiciary."

In other words, contrary to the Constitution which seeks to prevent power abuse by creating multiple sites of power (at national, provincial and local level), the Green Paper seeks to create one site of power at the centre. Contrary to the Constitution which upholds multiparty democracy, it says that political parties need to get on the same page - which means toeing the ANC line. And, contrary to the Constitution which guarantees a separation of powers between the executive, legislature and judiciary, it says that these arms of government should be fused closer together.

The political motive is also clear from the proposal to hold the local government elections on the same day as the provincial and national elections. The ANC knows that it is vulnerable at local level, where 'bread and butter' issues have prompted its own supporters to take to the streets in protest. It thinks that, by holding all the elections on the same day, these local issues will be eclipsed by national issues that are less open to scrutiny than what is happening on the ground. Separating these elections is crucial to the concept of dispersing power.

If the ANC was genuinely concerned about the state of delivery, it would take a different approach. Instead of focusing on the machinery of government, it would take an introspective look at the way it governs and change that. Because any sensible diagnosis of the problem would show that it is the ANC's own choices as a party that is destroying the state's capacity to deliver.

There are at least three things the ANC could do to improve service delivery.

Firstly, it could stop the practice of cadre deployment, a practice which destroys the ability of municipalities and provinces to deliver. Secondly, it could ensure that the candidate selection process for its elected representatives measured competence to do the job as a key criterion for selecting Councillors, MPLs and MPs. And, thirdly, it could adopt a zero-tolerance approach to corruption in its ranks - in deeds, not just words - starting at the very top.

But the ANC is more concerned with preventing other parties from delivering than it is about ensuring that its own representatives in government are able to. There is a growing fear in the ANC that people will soon realise that there is a party in South Africa that can and does govern effectively - for the benefit of everybody. This is why the more the DA shows that life can get better where it governs, the more the ANC tries to close us down. The ANC would rather poor people suffer under the ANC than improve their lives under the DA.

It is true that South Africa's system of government is complex. It is not always immediately obvious in which governmental sphere certain functions lie, resulting either in unnecessary duplication or plain neglect. However, this complexity is not insurmountable. Any apparent contradictions can be resolved by the Constitutional Court. Dispersing power is certainly preferable to reducing municipalities and provinces to mere implementing agencies of national government.

We cannot allow the ANC to entrench its power by destroying democracy. People have a right to vote for the party they choose. When they exercise that right and the party they elect forms a government, they expect that party to govern according to the mandate it was given -- not a centralised mandate of a different party that lost the local election.

We will defend our democracy by resisting this move to undermine it.


Signed Helen Zille