Local government past the tipping point?

It’s almost clichéd to say SA’s municipalities are poorly run. Virtually every Ratings Afrika and Auditor-General survey reminds us of this. The evidence is clear for all to see in the state of our pavements, roads, water and power outages, and signs in disrepair….which all paint a grim picture of local government’s deteriorating financial management. Releasing the report, titled "Not much to go around, yet not the right hands at the till”, the late Auditor General Kimi Makwetu revealed that Only 8% of municipalities received a clean audit, and on average they took 180 days to pay creditors. Irregular expenditure exceeded R32 billion – up from R24 billion in the previous year. On a national level, we may applaud the signs of tentative turnaround, but it is at municipal level that the battles will be fought. Against this backdrop one wonders what choice voters have to staunch the bleeding come the 1st of November?

To discuss this burning question Michael Avery is joined by Mike Schussler, independent economist at economists.co.za; Charl Kocks, a director of Ratings Afrika; John Dludlu, CEO of the Small Business Institute & Natasha Doren, Senior Consultant at Consulta