Q: Where has Salga been?
A: Your question should be preceded by the question: what are Salga’s allocated responsibilities in terms of the constitution of the republic?
Q: Isn’t Salga’s mandate to support municipalities to fulfil their developmental obligations?
A: It’s Salga's mandate to work with municipalities in a co-operative nature, as enshrined in the constitution and the Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act.
Q: To help them with capacity building and service delivery?
A: Yes.
Q: Why hasn’t Salga been doing this?
A: That’s an accusation to say Salga has not been doing that, when Salga over the years has been doing that.
Q: So why, out of 257 municipalities, have 34 got clean audits and 196 or so are in a state of collapse?
A: The problem is the government that has been made to assist and participate in creating conducive conditions for municipalities to perform their duties. If that collapses then of course what do you expect out of municipalities?
Q: Isn’t a more immediate problem that Salga is not doing what their members pay them substantial fees to do — which is to help them build capacity in financial and technical areas?
A: That’s very dangerous, that general assumption that municipalities don’t have skills. If you want to assist local government, this is not going to happen as long as there is an invisible hand in the affairs of local government. Municipalities are a reflection of political results. Political parties, not Salga, contest elections, and appoint individuals they believe have capacity.
Q: Are you saying there is nothing Salga can do about collapsing municipalities?
A: There are many things Salga is doing in terms of its mandate. It’s working with many municipalities, trying to assist them.
Q: Would you agree that measured by the performance of these municipalities, Salga has not been successful in carrying out its mandate?
A: Salga has been successful in carrying out its mandate. It has been at the forefront of representing the interests of municipalities, inclusive of negotiations on salaries.
Q: Are the high salaries you negotiate appropriate, given the performance of these municipalities?
A: To me, where I'm standing, they are appropriate — because you negotiate informed by principles of inflation.
Q: Haven’t the salaries of municipal officials been above CPI for years?
A: I wouldn’t be sure about that. And my understanding is that one of the things you consider when you enter negotiations for salaries is to create willingness of those in the organisation to perform their duties.
Q: How can you say you’ve raised performance levels when municipalities are in a state of collapse?
A: Performance of a duty is not Salga’s sole responsibility, it’s also those that are contesting elections, and different governments.
Q: Surely the bottom line is that Salga is not carrying out its mandate?
A: I’m not sure what ingredients you put together to arrive at that bottom line because Salga has been performing its duties according to its mandate. That is why there are now discussions about reviewing municipal laws. That is why today we all agree it is incorrect to allocate 46% of constitutional functions to local government, but you fund them at 10%.
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