The South African Local Government Association has welcomed Cabinet’s decision to send the Municipal Structures Amendment Bill to Parliament, saying legislation is urgently needed to govern the growing number of coalition-led municipalities.
The bill, commonly referred to as the Coalition Bill, aims to bring greater stability, transparency and accountability to municipal coalitions. Coalition councils have grown significantly, from 27 after the 2016 elections to 70 after the 2021 elections, making them a defining feature of South Africa’s local government landscape.
SALGA spokesperson Motalatale Modiba said the absence of a legislative framework had allowed political instability to undermine service delivery across several municipalities and metros.
“The framework is very clear. It says the agreements that various parties come into when they are doing coalition negotiations should culminate in clear, municipal-specific and publicly available agreements. We are very clear about municipal-specific. It can’t be that in bargaining, parties will say because we are supporting you in municipal X, then you automatically support us in municipal B, without necessarily looking at the different dynamics that exist there,” Modiba said.
He said some metros had seen three or more mayors within a single term of office, with each change in political leadership disrupting policy implementation and service delivery.
“When you have an executive mayor coming into office from a different party, they come carrying a different mandate, a different programme of action, which means the city or municipality is having to constantly reset insofar as the political direction is concerned. That has had an impact in terms of the pace of delivery and in terms of affecting the lived experiences of communities,” Modiba said.
Modiba said the bill would address one of the most destabilising features of current coalition arrangements, namely the ease with which motions of no confidence could be called.
“At the moment, it’s a willy-nilly thing. We wake up tomorrow, we don’t agree because we failed to agree on how to allocate a resource, and it’s a motion of no confidence. We can’t operate like that. The bill will set a framework to say once council has been established, you cannot call for a motion of no confidence until a certain period has passed, and even then, these are the criteria that should be met first,” Modiba said.
He said coalition agreements also needed to be translated into municipal Integrated Development Plans so that service delivery commitments could be monitored and budgeted for, rather than being abandoned as parties focused on holding coalitions together.
On accountability to residents, Modiba said the current system left communities unable to hold coalition partners to account because agreements were not publicly available.
“I don’t know what that agreement is because it hasn’t been made public for me to be able to know that the coalition partners have agreed to these non-negotiables insofar as delivery is concerned, and therefore I can hold them to account,” Modiba said.
With local government elections approaching, Modiba called on political parties to begin transition planning now rather than waiting for election results, and to use SALGA’s existing coalition framework, developed with the Dula Oma Institute and the University of the Western Cape, as a guide until the bill was enacted.
He said legislation alone would not be sufficient, and that political parties needed to demonstrate greater maturity by prioritising governance over narrow political interests.
“There is a greater role that political parties need to play in demonstrating that they are indeed putting public interest before their own interest. What would be the purpose if ultimately we don’t see any positive impact on delivery? So there is a greater role, starting with the calibre of people that political parties put forth as candidates in the respective councils,” Modiba said.
Facts Only
* The South African Local Government Association welcomed the Cabinet’s decision to send the Municipal Structures Amendment Bill to Parliament.
* The bill is commonly referred to as the Coalition Bill.
* The bill aims to bring greater stability, transparency, and accountability to municipal coalitions.
* Coalition councils have grown from 27 after the 2016 elections to 70 after the 2021 elections.
* The absence of a legislative framework allowed political instability to undermine service delivery in several municipalities and metros.
* Coalition agreements should culminate in clear, municipal-specific, and publicly available agreements.
* A concern was raised that parties might offer support without considering specific municipal dynamics during negotiations.
* Some metros experienced changes in mayoral leadership within a single term, disrupting policy implementation and service delivery.
* The bill proposes setting a framework preventing motions of no confidence until certain criteria are met after a specified period.
* Coalition agreements should be translated into municipal Integrated Development Plans for monitoring and budgeting service delivery commitments.
* Current systems prevented communities from holding coalition partners accountable because agreements were not public.
* Political parties were urged to begin transition planning based on existing frameworks while awaiting the bill's enactment.
Executive Summary
The South African Local Government Association welcomed the Cabinet's decision to send the Municipal Structures Amendment Bill, known as the Coalition Bill, to Parliament, asserting that legislation is necessary to manage the increasing number of coalition-led municipalities. The bill seeks to introduce greater stability, transparency, and accountability into municipal coalitions, which have expanded from 27 after the 2016 elections to 70 after the 2021 elections.
The SALGA spokesperson noted that the lack of a legislative framework had allowed political instability to negatively affect service delivery across various municipalities. Concerns were raised regarding coalition negotiations, where parties might agree to support one municipality without considering the dynamics of others, potentially leading to inconsistent support. Furthermore, the experience of having multiple mayors in a single term caused disruptions in policy implementation and service delivery.
The proposed bill is intended to address destabilizing features such as easy motions of no confidence by establishing criteria and timeframes for calling such motions. Additionally, the framework should require coalition agreements to be translated into municipal Integrated Development Plans to ensure service delivery commitments are monitored and budgeted, rather than being disregarded by parties focused on maintaining coalitions. Finally, transparency concerns arose because current systems prevented residents from holding coalition partners accountable as agreements were not publicly available. The spokesperson called for political parties to prioritize public interest over narrow political interests and to use existing frameworks while awaiting the legislation.
Full Take
The narrative constructs a compelling case for legislative intervention by framing the current state of municipal coalitions as fundamentally destabilizing and lacking in structural accountability. The central argument pivots on the assertion that political instability directly impedes service delivery, which is then positioned as a direct consequence of an inadequate legal structure governing multi-party arrangements.
A critical pattern emerges in the focus on formalizing informal agreements: the shift from ad-hoc coalition bargaining to legally binding, public-facing documents (Integrated Development Plans) suggests an underlying tension between political expediency and administrative necessity. The insistence that accountability requires public access to agreements touches upon a broader theme of procedural justice—that governing structures must be transparent for citizens to exercise legitimate oversight.
The call for political parties to demonstrate maturity by prioritizing governance over narrow interests introduces a layer where the responsibility shifts from purely legislative action to political culture change. This implies that the failure lies not just in the absence of a law, but in the pre-existing prioritization of partisan dynamics over public service delivery. The implications suggest that achieving effective local governance requires not only procedural clarity (the bill) but also a fundamental reorientation of political agency towards shared, demonstrable outcomes for residents.
Bridge Questions: What specific metrics can be used to objectively measure the correlation between coalition instability and measurable declines in municipal service delivery? How might the implementation of publicly available agreements affect the internal dynamics of coalition negotiations moving forward? If parties prioritize governance over narrow interests, what institutional checks must be in place beyond legislative enactment to ensure sustained behavioral change?
Sentinel — Human
The text reads like legitimate reporting on a specific legislative proposal, grounded in expert testimony regarding the practical difficulties of coalition governance in South African local government.