There was a very interesting feature on Focus tonight. I know many of the people reading this are probably American / other Strange and Wonderful Creatures of the Last Days, so I’ll give you a little backstory.
We have had some serious problems with service delivery in many municipalities here in South Africa, which have not been addressed because, in many cases, the staff of the municipalities are simply not capable of delivering the services they are supposed to. Add in the corruption (you can buy a driving license for R3 000 (about $430) in some places), inordinately large salaries for municipal staff and a general attitude of ‘why fix today what can be fixed tomorrow, or next year, or never’ and you have a very, very bad situation.
In some towns there are potholes you can lose your car down in the main street.
Raw sewage is running down the streets.
In most of our towns the water is so unsafe that citizens have been warned not to drink it or use it for cooking.
In many of the townships, people have actually rioted, burning tyres and blocking off roads. Burning down clinics and libraries too, which I neither understand nor approve of (how do you think burning down the sites of the very, very few municipal services that are actually rendered is going to improve the quality of service delivery? Riddle me this. Plus: Library + Burning = Blasphemy)
Some towns have hit upon a solution of sorts, led by the South African Taxpayer’s Union. They stopped paying service tax to the local municipalities. Apparently they are allowed to do this, if they pay the money into a trust account with the intention of paying it to the municipality when the services the money is meant for, are actually delivered. Fair enough.
The municipalities did nothing.
The potholes worsened, the people couldn’t live with the stink anymore and they were just tired of having to offroad their vehicles in the CBD.
So they started taking the money from the accounts and using it to render the services the municipality was supposed to. They repaired their own roads. They started to remove the sewage. In short, they were putting the money where it was supposed to have gone in the first place.
This is apparently illegal. The government is now taking these people to court in order to force them to pay the service tax directly to the municipality. It’s going to the Constitutional Court.
Now there are three ways this could go. (Feel free to correct me, I’m not a lawyer, nor do I have any kind of special knowledge)
- The courts find against the towns. They are forced to pay the service taxes. The municipalities completely restructure, hiring people who are actually competent instead of having their sole qualification being some kind of relationship (biological, matrimonial or fiscal) with the people deciding on appointments. Service delivery improves.
For the record, I think pigs might fly before the last part comes true. Our government is much too focused on their kickbacks and their ‘comrades in the Struggle’ which, just FYI, has been over for sixteen years. - The courts find against the towns. They are forced to pay the service tax. Nothing changes. In a year or two we’re back at the same point, only this time it will be illegal before it starts. I don’t want to be here when that happens.
- The courts find for the towns and the municipality changes its ways, working with the people. service delivery improves, all is well, crisis over, let’s all go home and have a beer.
Again, not very likely. - Option number 3: The courts find for the towns. This would be a very interesting result, and as I understand it (remember, I am by no means an expert) there may be actual legal grounds for this verdict (since I’m pretty sure nobody in their right minds would expect people to pay for services that aren’t being delivered.)
In any case, should this happen, then it would pave the way for other people to start doing similar things. Let us take a quick look at how this could run:
At the moment, about 7% of income tax goes to the police force. Were they allowed, many people would take that off their taxes and pay it to a private security company that will actually do its job, since the police force is (for the most part, I know a couple of very fine Men in Blue, but they are the exceptions to the rule) either corrupt or incompetent or both.
Another percentage (I don’t have the exact figure) goes to medical services. Many people would prefer to pay this part of their taxes to private, localized medical care facilities, which would in all probability deliver a higher level of service than we are currently receiving for substantially less actual money. (For example, in a private medical facility of any kind, if a person is on leave (not medical, just leave) for more than two years – yes, this has really happened – that person would be removed from the payroll, or at the very least have to go on half pay.)
Electricity: We pay the municipalities to ensure that power is distributed from them (they get it from Eskom) to us. In many cases we don’t actually receive reliable power. It’s gotten to the point where, when I was working in reception, I had to say more than once ‘I’m sorry, Sir/Madam/Transgendered Individual, I can’t make a booking for you right now. No, sir, I can’t check whether we have space either. Load shedding, you see.’ And no matter where in the country they were calling from, they would understand completely. (Load shedding is a phenomenon where we would, without notification of any kind, suddenly have power outages of up to four hours.) Many people would take that money and put in solar power with a generator for backup, which has the other advantage of being green.
We pay for our roads to be repaired, sewage to be treated and recycled, and clean water.
All of which can be done on an each-town-for-itself basis by local co-ops.
It can be done for less money by contracting privately, because then we wouldn’t be paying for Julius Malema’s flashy cars in addition to services we aren’t getting. (If you don’t know who Julius Malema is, be glad. Be very glad.)
Now, can anyone see the problem?
If we go through the list of services the government is supposed to be rendering in exchange for our tax money, and we remove the services we aren’t actually receiving…well. There will be virtually no money going into government anymore.
What will happen then, I wonder?
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