House Chair, the ACDP has taken note of the report which refers to an additional allocation of R4.6 billion added to the provincial equitable share for Free State, Gauteng and the North West provinces, and this follows changes in the equitable share formula as set out in the 2025 MTEF.
We also share concerns about the continuous use of—can you believe it—2011 census data to determine the equitable share of revenue to provinces and municipalities.
Clearly, STATS South Africa must be better funded to produce better and credible census data to allow National Treasury and ourselves to use updated data to determine what should be the correct equitable share of revenue to provinces and municipalities, and once that allocation is made, we have to ensure that the funds are properly spent.
Many other speakers have referred to corruption, misallocation of funds. The Auditor-General (AG) herself continues to sound the alarm at local government level. The concerns now relate to metros such as Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ethekwini, Nelson Mandela Bay and Mangaung. The trend of these poor audit outcomes continues with only 41 municipalities obtaining clean audits for the previous financial year.
The AG has called for urgent interventions, yet her pleas have fallen on deaf ears. What we are seeing is a collapse of services. Potholes are rarely fixed unless, of course, you have the G20—then everything is fixed for a week!
Service delivery protests are rife, often accompanied by violence. But what is even more distressing is as hard-pressed households and businesses fail to pay their municipal accounts, revenue declines and municipalities, in turn, owe waterboards and Eskom billions of rands.
Municipal debt is now a staggering R427 billion, so, on the one hand, one can place blame on the municipalities, but on the other hand, they’re not able to collect the revenue due to them.
So, what is needed? With next year’s Local Government Elections looming, it is clear that a new model of political leadership is required at municipal level: those who understand stewardship of state resources and are servant leaders, not there to loot and steal, but to serve the people.
Let us apply the Jethro Principle in electing and nominating our councillors—elect councillors who are competent, able, God-fearing, and who hate dishonest gain. Just think how we could turn around our towns and cities with such councillors and officials! These are the candidates the ACDP offers as Kingdom-builders.
The ACDP will support this report.
I thank you.
