The Grinding Issue: November 2021 Edition
Image Source: Here
Welcome to November! Hope you’re all in good health and spirits. This month we’re going to use the newsletter to cover a topic not directly in the line of sight of the Foundation’s mission, but a critical one nonetheless – Local Government Elections (LGE)! Given that we’ve just had the sixth round of local government elections, I thought it would be interesting to cover these.
Firstly, how do the elections work?
SA operates a mixed member electoral system for municipal elections. This means that half the seats on the councils are chosen through a proportional representation system, whereby the parties receive seats in proportion to the share of votes they receive, while the other half are chosen through a single-member constituency-based system, so that individual candidates who receive the most votes in their ward gain their ward’s seat. That’s why in the metros, voters receive two ballots (one for the party and one for a ward councilor). In smaller cities and rural areas, voters receive a third – to choose a party for a district municipality, which encompasses 4-6 local municipalities and coordinates cross-boundary development issues.
According to the Municipal Structures Act of 1998, the newly elected council then chooses an executive committee among their members, which in turn selects the mayor and deputy for the municipality.
What exactly does local government do?
South Africa is considered Africa’s most decentralized country by governance, with local governments having huge powers of autonomy from central government. There are three spheres of government in SA:
National government
Provincial government, and
Local government
These three spheres are made up of three parts:
Legislature – council in the local government spheres
Executive – mayor and mayoral committee, and
Administration – municipal manager, HoDs and staff
Municipalities are responsible for the following functions:
Local tourism
Electricity delivery to homes and businesses
Water for household use
Sewage and sanitation
Refuse removal
Storm water systems
Firefighting services
Municipal health services
Decisions around land use, (e.g. zoning of areas)
Municipal roads
Municipal public transport
Street trading
Abattoirs and fresh food markets
Parks and recreation [all areas]
Libraries and other facilities
It’s painfully clear that the bulk of our experiences as citizens are in the sphere of local government responsibility, so working local government is key for the lived experience of citizens.
South Africa is divided into local municipalities. Each municipality has a council where decisions are made and municipal officials and staff who implement the work of the municipality.
The Council is made up of elected members who approve policies and by-laws for their area. The Council has to pass a budget for its municipality each year. They must also decide on development plans and service delivery for their municipal area.
The work of the Council is co-ordinated by a Mayor who is elected by Council. The Mayor is assisted by Councillors in an Executive Committee (elected by council) or a Mayoral Committee (appointed by the mayor). The Mayor, together with the Executive or Mayoral Committee, also oversees the work of the Municipal Manager and department heads. In some very small municipalities, the whole Council forms the Executive – this is called a Plenary Executive.
The work of the municipality is done by the municipal administration that is headed by the Municipal Manager and other officials. S/he is responsible for employing staff and co-ordinating them to implement all programmes approved by council.
LGE Results? What’s next?
These elections had voters choosing between over 60,000 candidates across more than 300 political parties, in order to elect councilors for 257 municipalities. With all the counting done, the results were as follows:
More people stayed away from voting (14.2m) than voted (11.9m), a 45% turnout and the lowest registered at any election in SA since 1994. The ANC is still the biggest party by a long shot but has dipped below the psychological barrier of 50% for the first time. This is due to them losing 2.6m votes between the 2016 & 2021 LGEs. The DA is the second biggest party, also by a mile vs the third. However, they also shed voters in the order of 1.5m between the two. The EFF maintained their share of the vote of around 1.2m votes. New kid on the block ActionSA, while not garnering too many votes on a national level, made huge inroads in the metros they targeted – namely Joburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni.
This obviously leads us into coalition government territory and it will be interesting to see who falls gets into bed with whom in order to form governing alliances. What’s also clear is that once again it’s a very interesting time to be a South African, hopefully it’s not in the vein of the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”.
Some reference links below for further reading if interested:
P.S. Thanks Semadi for the topic idea, very fascinating indeed, I learnt a lot trawling the web for material!
Project Update
No new projects to report. However, as we look into 2022 and become a bit more emboldened by the successes of projects undertaken in 2020/2021, there is a need for us to give our funding a step change. This will hopefully result in more engagement by the Foundation with members, potential funders and other stakeholders in 2022 and beyond. As if any of us needed any inspiration, the FLY tablet project (photos here) was a roaring success and we hope to repeat this success in a significantly bigger way next year…
As always, please send any fundraising ideas you have to the Projects team for consideration and potential support.
We continue to call out to all members to shadow the various portfolios and join subcommittees for projects (more below).
Sub-Committee
With the successful AGM behind us, one of the resolutions tabled was the establishment of the following standing sub-committees, to help dispatch the business of the Foundation more effectively:
Fundraising Subcommittee: Thebe Mabiletsa
Chief Whip Subcommittee (to be renamed): Thulani Kunene
Social Media Subcommittee: Madikana Phalafala and Maryjane Mokgethi
Projects Subcommittee: Mzwandile Riba
FLY Subcommittee: Hamilton Ndlovu
Raising Legends Subcommittee: Marjorie Mabambo
Dignity Life Subcommittee: Candice Maluleke
Thabang ka Mmino Subcommittee: Semadi Motau
Ogle Foundation Subcommittee: Warren Miller
SSP Subcommittee: Sandile Malinga
Treasury Subcommittee: Nyiko Mageza
Covid Update
Alert level 1 has been great. Some finally started travelling again (even if just for work), restaurants are starting to come alive again more regularly and traffic is back. Hope you’re still enjoying it (in an obviously Covid-safe way). So far, SA is running far behind its vaccination target of 300k jabs per day and my optimism that we’ll be there by mid-October has been smashed. This is gravely concerning for the upcoming December holidays as we are starting to see the emergence of fourth waves in countries with low vaccination rates (<70%).
So, if you can encourage someone (especially yourself) to get jabbed, please do, it would be nice to groove in peace without curfew this Dezemba.
Where we stand with South Africa’s vaccination drive: As of 11 November 2021, the total number of vaccines administered to adults South Africans was 23,684,435. Breakdown below:
So, we’ve got just over 13.2m (33% adults) fully vaccinated adults, up from 10.2m (23% adults) a month ago. The pace has levelled off (left-hand chart below). We’ve now 10.4m partially vaccinated (26.1%). This is bad news as we’re barely averaging 150k jabs a day over October – half the target pace. For context, government’s initial target was to vaccinate 67% of the population, which is ~40m people – we’re about 57.5% there (partial + full jabs).
As always, all the info you need is right here.
Finally, the digital Covid vaccination certificates are available (link here). You’ll just need the following:
SA ID/Foreign passport number
Cellphone with the mobile number used in the vaccine registration
You vaccination code received from the SMS you received post vaccination
Discovery members can still download theirs via their Discovery app (login here).
So we still need to mask up, wash our hands and stay socially distanced to keep ourselves safe. And most importantly, get our heads around vaccinating and get vaxxed at the earliest possible opportunity.
I’ve pasted some resources below for those who have questions or would like to share with family or friends who are hesitant:
https://www.discovery.co.za/corporate/covid19-5-reasons-you-should-have-the-vaccination
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019ncov/vaccines/vaccine-benefits.html
Upcoming Events
11 December 2021 – Year-End Partytjie. Venue to be confirmed