LETTER: Metros need all the cash they can get

Neva Makgetla argues that the government should divert more resources from the metros towards municipalities in towns and rural areas to reduce historic social inequalities (“History counts when measuring performance in municipalities”, September 20). This is a reasonable proposition as far as it goes, but it neglects three important issues.

First, there is mounting evidence that most smaller municipalities face bigger problems of governance and institutional capacity than resource constraints. Diverting more funds in their direction may not help many of them since they struggle to spend their existing resources effectively. There are bigger issues needing to be addressed than funding.

Second, the evidence is clear that cities are generally more productive than other areas, so diverting more resources elsewhere would undermine growth in jobs, output and tax revenues. For example, the metros generate 80% of all municipal revenue in SA with only 40% of the country’s population, implying that there’s a higher return on public investment in cities. An economic crisis is not a good time to be shifting resources away from the places with the best prospects of boosting productive activity and sustained employment growth.

Third, the metros already face serious backlogs in public services, most obviously in burgeoning informal settlements, backyard dwellings and rundown inner cities. There are also serious shortfalls in basic infrastructure capacity and maintenance citywide. Diverting resources elsewhere will only exacerbate these problems and aggravate social discontent and unrest. 

Prof Ivan Turok
Cape Town

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