A total of 23 local and district municipalities have been placed under administration, by the ANC, over the last year. This fact is significant for two reasons: first, it illustrates in hard terms how the ANC has failed to deliver services at local government level and, second, it might well be a proxy for centralising control and power, as the ANC seeks to undermine the federal nature of our constitutional democracy.

The DA will now be tracking the situation, through regular parliamentary questions, and updating developments in this regard, through statements such as this. As these decisions are made at a provincial level it is difficult to map the bigger picture. But that picture is central to understanding the extent of the problem. The DA will also pose parliamentary questions to establish who has been appointed as administrator and what their qualifications are.

A full breakdown follows below:

Province No. of Municipalities No. under Administration Names of Municipalities under Administration
Western Cape 29 0
Northern Cape 31 0
Eastern Cape 43 3 (6.8%) Alfred Nzo (DM); Kou-Kamma (LM); Mnquma (LM)
Gauteng 11 1 (9%) Nokeng tsa Taemane (LM)
North West 25 5 (20%) Moses Kotane (LM) Tswaing (LM); Ngaka Modiri Molema (DM); Madibeng (LM);
Ditsobotla (LM)
KwaZulu-Natal 60 4 (6.6%) Amajuba (DM); Indaka (LM); Umhalbuyalingana (LM); Okhahlamba (LM)
Mpumalanga 21 5 (23%) Mbombela (LM); Pixley ka Seme (LM); Lekwa (LM); Thaba Chweu (LM); Mkhondo (LM)
Limpopo 30 0
Free State 25 5 (20%) Mohokare (LM); Xhariep (DM); Nala (LM)
Masilonyana (LM); Thabo Mofutsanyane (DM)
TOTAL 275 23 (8.4%)

There are a number of important insights which flow from this trend. The first is the most obvious: numerous ANC controlled municipalities are failing to deliver. This fact is a consequence, first and foremost, of those councillors that represent the ANC and their inability to perform the various functions their office demands of them. The ANC is a party defined by denial, and accountability is not something that comes naturally to it, so it is a sign of the extent to which the rot has set in, that not a week passes by, without a new municipality being put under provincial administration.

The second insight, following-on from the first, is that if the situation is to be arrested, the ANC must act to end cadre deployment. The Department of Cooperative governance has, itself, identified this policy as intrinsic to the meltdown at local government level. Its recently published ‘State of Local Government in South Africa' Report puts it like this: ‘A culture of patronage and nepotism is now so widespread in many municipalities that the former municipal accountability system is ineffective and inaccessible to many citizens.' It is this policy that is primarily responsible for destroying accountability and undermining the requirements of good governance.

But it is the broader context into which this development needs to be situated which is perhaps most significant. The ANC is on a concerted and systematic drive to centralise power in the hands of the national government in general and the executive in particular, reducing federalism and denuding the Constitution in the process. The proposed Single Public Service Bill aims to achieve this, so does the bill designed to scrap the provinces. They both reduce the powers of local and provincial governments. It would certainly help the ANC's cause, were it to point to the number of municipalities under administration and say: ‘They can't manage their own affairs, it is a Fait Accompli that they be brought under central control'.

But that would be a profoundly undemocratic move and the justification runs against several key constitutional principles. If a ruling party fails to deliver, the electorate must remove them from office. That is the core function of a democracy. What should never happen, is for a democracy to be bent into a different shape, to accommodate the failings of the party in charge.

And so the trend outlined above should serve as a singular and powerful message to South Africa's voters: by its own admission, the ANC cannot do the job it was elected to do; each and every voter now has a responsibility to hold it to account for that failing. A good place to start is the 2011 local government elections.