Fixing Local Government In South Africa Needs Political Solutions, Not Technical Ones

STEVEN FRIEDMAN|

SOUTH Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) has long been good at diagnosing its problems, but not much good at fixing them.

Its own documents have been accurately describing its problems for two decades – factionalism and corruption, which are often mentioned by its detractors, have been discussed in its reports and strategy documents since the 1990s.

But knowing what the problems are does not seem to help it to solve them.

The newest example of this ability to identify problems is a comment by deputy finance minister David Masondo.

He told an ANC MP who asked him why local government was not working and was getting worse that the key was “sorting out” politics in local government:

We can change rules and regulations but as long as we don’t tackle the issue of political leadership at a local government level we will continue to have many