State capture is the most brazen at municipal level

The phrase “state capture” has become somewhat hackneyed in the wake of the Gupta saga, which may have truncated the debate before it really began.

That would be a great pity, because I believe South Africa is at great risk of experiencing the most vicious and insidious form of state capture, namely municipal capture.

This phenomenon is likely to overwhelm us if we end the debate on this prematurely.

There is an assumption that state capture happens at state or national level, and past and recent events serve to reinforce the notion that state capture happens at the commanding heights of the economy, where the well-heeled and influential lobby and scheme.

What we are missing is that this practice at subnational level has taken a different form and is already widespread.

In the provinces, it is more subtle, while at municipal government level, it is more brazen.

A mere 100 voters in a ward can change the balance of power in a municipality and thus ensure its capture. It is at this level that, if not checked, this practice could undermine our hard-earned democracy.

For this reason, I find the silence of bodies such as the Electoral Commission of South Africa in this important debate disturbingly deafening.

I guess the commission has bigger problems to deal with at present, with an election looming and preparations well behind schedule.

On August 3, South Africa will, for the fourth time since the advent of democracy, elect councillors to whom they will entrust the governance and management of this important sphere of government.

It is likely this year’s poll will be highly contested and the turnout should be as good if not better than the last election.

In the 2011 municipal election, 225 parties contested for more than 10000 seats across 4257 wards in 228 municipalities.

The local government election is the most critical election in that communities, candidates and local issues take centre stage rather than political parties, with their high-level policies and vague statements of intent.

The sheer magnitude of the level of participation and relatively low barriers to entry for candidates and other political actors are a welcome enhancement of democracy. But this is not without risk, particularly in the funding and financial support for political parties and candidates.

Everyone knows that money is important in elections, and it is for this reason that serious consideration should be given to regulating political party funding more carefully to mitigate the risk of state and municipal capture by unscrupulous benefactors.

The genesis of state capture is the funding of political parties and candidates. In some western democracies, election management bodies are entrusted with the responsibility of overseeing and regulating the funding of parties.

In South Africa, there can be no better time than now to reintroduce the debate about how political party funding should be regulated as a way of preventing state capture.

Municipalities are responsible collectively for spending about 60% of the national purse, which translates into considerable financial resources.

These are by any standard huge amounts of money, yet it is still not sufficient, given the infrastructure and services backlogs in South Africa.

It is, therefore, all the more critical that these resources are allocated efficiently, more especially when it comes to essential services – bread-and-butter issues, such as the supply of potable water, sanitation, roads, refuse and electricity.

These are the basic functions the municipal sphere of government must provide and regulate to maintain stability in society.

We cannot afford to have such a huge enterprise and critical aspect of our democracy undermined by suspect parties that do not care about the greater good.

Landiwe Mahlangu is an economist and former chairman of the Municipal Demarcation Board. He chairs the Gaffney Group