Municipalities with unfunded budgets neglect basic service delivery

Residents are forced to live with sewers bubbling in the open, water shortages and roads riddled with potholes, yet municipal budgets are full of “community engagement imbizos”.

These were the sentiments of co-operative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) minister Thembi Nkadimeng when speaking about the state of municipalities at the district development model (DDM) conference, at Stellenbosch University this week. 

Nkadimeng said there were 168 municipalities with unfunded budgets. She found the budgets had “community engagements” and did not prioritise basic service delivery needs. 

An unfunded budget means that a municipality made a financial commitment for projects but did not have the money, leading to spiralling debt.

According to the 2020/21 auditor-general report, 47% of municipalities continued to spend money they did not have and incurred a deficit of R6.63bn owed to creditors.

“What is even worse about these unfunded budgets is that nothing translates to [improvement] of roads, better water provision, nothing translates to what you think is tangible and is needed by community members. 

“There are sewers in the street boiling and there are no roads,” Nkadimeng told municipality officials, urging them to do better.

The minister blamed municipal councils for approving the budgets. She said a certain percentage of councillors should have an educational qualification after a Cogta report found some councillors in KwaZulu-Natal could not read or write.

Nkadimeng decried corruption in municipalities, saying it thrived because officials were not reporting fraud.

“How do we incorporate law enforcement into DDM? Because unless you are not living where I am living and staying in the municipalities where you are working, it’s a gangster’s paradise. We have been taken over, and if we do not accept it, we have more problems coming our side. How many of us in this room stand up where we are in the municipality and say this is wrong. We don’t, maybe it’s out of fear, I am not judgmental,” she said.

Nkadimeng said that despite the financial management framework developed by the Treasury, mismanagement of funds continued in local government. One of the recent cases of corruption in municipalities was that of former municipal manager of Nama Khoi Municipality in the Northern Cape, Nevie Aubrey Baartman.

He was found guilty in June of contravention of the municipal finance management act in a R79.9m tender. Hawks spokesperson Capt Tebogo Thebe said Baartman was charged in 2021 for fraud in the tender awarded to a construction company in 2013. 

“The former municipal manager was accused of awarding a tender of supplying paver bricks and kerbs worth R79,966,559 without following correct tender procedures,” Thebe said. 

Baartman, who is an EFF member, is set to be sentenced by the Springbok magistrate's court in September. 

TimesLIVE