President Cyril Ramaphosa, on Friday, addressed the community of Ugu, in KwaZulu-Natal, where he said the local community should join hands with government to strengthen their municipality and local governments throughout the province.

He was speaking during the outreach programme of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) where, for the first time this week, taking Parliament to the People took place in the Ugu district municipality, on the South Coast.

The municipality was badly affected by floods early last year alongside its counterparts in eThekwini, KwaDukuza, and in Msunduzi. Since then, the state of the roads has been a challenge for workers travelling to work, and for businesses that transport their products to markets.

“We have heard during the public hearings that the people of this district need housing, particularly after the floods earlier this year destroyed many homes and businesses. The poor state of the roads in parts of the district also did not spare difficulty for leaners to get to schools and for people to get to the clinics. Good roads are not just important to people’s everyday lives; they also open up economic opportunities and strengthen local economic development,” he stated.

Ugu is an agricultural district, and the president acknowledged that the majority of people relied on the land to feed themselves and their families and to grow crops and for their livelihoods.

“Challenges with agricultural production are also having a direct impact on people’s lives in this community. There are also longstanding issues with land tenure in areas under traditional administration,” he pointed out.

He acknowledged that reports from the Auditor-General and National Treasury pointed to inefficiency, maladministration, lack of financial controls and poor governance in many municipalities.

However, he welcomed the new Local Government: Municipal Systems Amendment Act, which he declared as an important tool for improving the manner in which municipalities function and for accountability.

“This should be viewed alongside the Framework for the Professionalisation of the Public Sector, which was adopted by Cabinet last month. This makes specific proposals to ensure merit-based recruitment and promotion and more effective consequence management for all public servants. This is going to have a big impact on how government, at all levels, works,” he said.

The President said that the task of this year’s Taking Parliament to the People was to deliberate on what was being done and what must be done to strengthen local government.

“The interaction with the people of Ugu district municipality has no doubt done much to enrich the NCOP’s deliberations. We often spend a great deal of time diagnosing the problem and painting a picture of what a poorly-run municipality looks like. We should instead be focused on what an ideal municipality should look like and how to build such municipalities across the country,” Ramaphosa said.

He reiterated that the key elements of an ideal municipality included a vibrant economy, places which tourists wanted to visit, inter-connected communities and skills and training hubs.

To achieve this, he said local government needed to be capacitated to play a far more prominent role in implementing the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan.

“We cannot achieve higher economic growth, we cannot create more jobs and we cannot grow more businesses, if local government does not function well. We know there is so much further we need to go if the promise of our Constitution is to be fulfilled for all,” Ramaphosa said.