The local government elections, and the subsequent celebratory or remorse hangovers, are now behind us. The newly elected administrations now face the hard work of making the many promises a reality and creating better communities and livelihoods for the people in their constituencies.

This fresh start is a unique opportunity to get Early Childhood Development (ECD) service delivery firmly on the agenda of the new local administrations. ECD is a national priority, with a recently released guiding policy, but with limited implementation so far.

There are 278 municipalities in South Africa – eight metropolitan, 44 district and 226 local municipalities. If well-planned, the ECD sector can make significant shifts happen at local government level but it must use this new space strategically and systematically because engaging with municipalities one at a time is unlikely to unlock change.

These are local government’s responsibilities according to the National Integrated ECD policy:

• District municipalities are responsible for effective coordination of ECD. 
• Local and metro municipalities must participate in planning of ECD services. They are responsible for supporting child care facilities to meet minimum infrastructural, health and safety standards, registration of child minding services, development of new ECD service provision infrastructure, and auditing and identification of available infrastructure that may be used for the expansion of early leaning services and programmes in areas of need.
• Where capacity exists, the Department of Social Development may assign responsibility to local governments to register and deliver ECD services.
• Local government is responsible for the equitable provision of play facilities for young children.
• District, local and metro municipalities are required to establish coordinating structures to support the planning, coordination and monitoring of ECD services and programmes.
• These responsibilities must be planned for and reflected in all Integrated Development Plans and their supporting budgets.

It is highly unlikely that municipalities will be able to fulfil these responsibilities without an overarching local government plan of action that is supported by adequate resources.  Most municipalities are at very different stages of development with huge variations in capacity, resources and understanding to engage in ECD provisioning.

Realistically, to ensure that all municipalities understand and implement their ECD responsibilities in the election honeymoon period, we need to reach all of them at the same time.  The ECD policy provides a vehicle or mechanism to do just that.

The policy embeds a mechanism for the systemic activation, support, monitoring and oversight of local government’s ECD responsibilities. It assigns an overarching role to the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA). 

The policy assigns responsibility to COGTA for:

• Funding and promoting fulfillment of municipal responsibility for development of early learning facilities;
• Synergising the Expanded Public works Programme and Community Work Programme with the community-based human resource provisioning for ECD
• Providing guidance and capacity development to municipalities in respect of their ECD responsibilities and obligations, in particular the inclusion of ECD in their IDPs.

The bigger, overarching problem is a lack of ECD awareness, capacity, knowledge, and expertise within COGTA. In addition, there is not a well-developed relationship with clear pathways for communication and cooperation between COGTA and the ECD sector. This deficiency must be remedied if local government is to fulfil its ECD potential.

There is an urgent need to unlock this stream of support for local government. This will require the development, by COGTA, of a national local government ECD support plan which identifies the challenges and puts in place the necessary programmes, planning support, as well as monitoring and reporting mechanisms. The plan must be adequately resourced as well.

This step will not be possible unless the ECD planning, human resourcing and monitoring capacity in COGTA is improved. COGTA needs expert ECD leadership, infrastructure and support staff.  The Early Childhood Development sector must mobilise behind this opportunity as a matter of urgency to ensure the current post-election window of opportunity is used strategically.

Written by Patricia Martin, Advocacy Consultant at Ilifa Labantwana and founder of advocacyaid.com