Date: 12/12/2011

Source: The Inkatha Freedom Party

Title: IFP: Buthelezi: Address by the president, at the summit on local government and traditional leadership, Durban

The Hon. MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Ms Nomsa
Dube; Traditional Leaders and Government Officials.

Recognising the importance of a Summit of this kind, I, like other Amakhosi,
sought to prepare for today's meeting. Unfortunately, the programme and
agenda for this two day Summit was still being decided by the Department
late on Thursday afternoon. It was therefore difficult to know how to
prepare, and we were left to guess at what the Department wishes to discuss.

This is somehow not an unusual occurrence. There have been summits,
workshops and consultative processes before between local government and
traditional leaders, with the purported aim of enhancing our partnership for
the sake of development and service delivery. But in the end, no summit is
going to change a relationship that is legislated to be a certain way.

The rules of our cooperation are set down in the administrative framework,
which creates limitations that we cannot and may not go beyond. For as long
as these aspects of legislation remain unchanged, this problem will remain
the insurmountable obstacle that makes talking about deepening our
partnership somehow futile.

Let us therefore be clear about the problem. Section 81 of the Local
Government: Municipal Structures Act stipulates the role of traditional
leaders within municipal councils. A limited number of pre-identified
traditional leaders are allowed to attend and participate in council
meetings, but do not carry the authority of councilors.

In terms of subsection 81(3): "Before a municipal council takes a decision
on any matter directly affecting the area of a traditional authority, the
council must give the leader of that authority the opportunity to express a
view on that matter." That is not to say that the council is obligated to
act on this view or even take it into account in the decision-making
process.

In terms of subsection 81(4), "The MEC for local government in a province,
after consulting the provincial House of Traditional Leaders, may by notice
in the Provincial Gazette (a) regulate the participation of traditional
leaders in the proceedings of a municipal council; and (b) prescribe a role
for traditional leaders in the affairs of a municipality." Traditional
leaders may thus participate in municipal council meetings, but cannot vote
and cannot expect their participation to have any binding influence.
Moreover, the MEC will determine what their actual role is and what form
their participation will take.

To me, that does not sound like a partnership. Traditional leaders have
become ceremonial figures in local governance, barred from taking any
decisions or even having a vote in the decision-making process. Thus we can
gather in a Summit like this to talk about closer cooperation, but in the
absence of a framework that allows real partnership, there is little that
can be achieved.

When the Acting Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs,
the Honourable Nathi Mthethwa delivered the 2011/2012 budget to the NCOP in
June this year, a clear distinction was made between the two line functions
of the Department. Indeed, the Minister first spoke at length about the
Department of Cooperative Governance, before speaking briefly about the
Department of Traditional Affairs. The Minister prefaced this section with
the following words: "The strategic role of the Department of Traditional
Affairs is to assist the institution of traditional leadership to transform
itself to be a strategic partner with Government in the development of
communities."

That makes it clear who is the dog and who is the tail. But even the form of
this assistance to our institution "to transform itself" is unclear.
Traditional Affairs enjoys less than 0.2% of the budget of the Department of
Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. In terms of the 2011/2012
budget, our Government spends more money providing "strategic advice" for
the media development of provincial and local government than we do building
capacity and developing policy around traditional affairs.

Moreover, Traditional Leaders, who are subject to the requirements of the
Public Finance Management Act, have no autonomy or any budget to perform
their functions. We cannot even hold a meeting without the Department of
Local Government and Traditional Affairs approving the budget to hold the
meeting. Traditional councils are left with no administrative capacity.

Under Apartheid, traditional councils operated on the basis of levies. But
under this democratic Government, such levies have been abolished. In their
place, no provision is made to fund traditional councils. Indeed, there is
no budget allocated to traditional councils; there is no budget allocated to
the National House of Traditional Leaders; nor to the Provincial Houses, nor
the Houses at local level. This issue of our Houses having no budget has
severely curtailed the effectiveness of traditional leadership.

I have spoken in the national House of Parliament about the absence of a
budget for our Local House, which forces me to ask my wife to provide
refreshments whenever we meet. The Honourable Minister of Cooperative
Governance and Traditional Affairs, the Honourable Mr Sicelo Shiceka was
shocked to hear this. Yet still the status quo has not changed. If we cannot
even employ a secretary or get a phone line, how can we implement even the
most visionary development initiatives?

This has placed traditional leaders and leadership completely outside of the
sphere of governance altogether. We are, frankly, a council with no official
function, no structures and no administrative capacity: an empty shell of an
institution. If traditional leaders are to cooperate with local government
to promote development, then we must have the means to do so.

Another problem we are faced with is that of overlapping responsibilities
and a lack of clear delineation of roles. Amakhosi have raised this issue on
numerous occasions, pointing out that the functions and powers of
traditional leaders need to be spelled out just as those of municipalities
are spelled out. It must be clear just what we are to do within the local
municipality. Without that, there will be continuous clashes between
municipalities and Amakhosi.

This problem began with the dishonouring of the Agreement for Reconciliation
and Peace signed just before the 1994 election, which expressly stipulated
that the institution of traditional leadership, the status and role of the
Zulu King and the constitutional position of KwaZulu would be protected in
the provincial constitution of KwaZulu Natal. While the interim Constitution
of South Africa placed indigenous and customary law on the same level as
provincial law, the final Constitution left the matter in limbo, allowing
legislation to give municipalities all the powers and functions of
traditional leaders.

The matter came to a head in 2000, when the new wall-to-wall system of local
government was inaugurated. Due to the lack of clarification, a clash was
pending between the roles of councillors and traditional leaders. Therefore,
on the 30th of November 2000, on the eve of the Local Government Elections,
a delegation of the Coalition of Traditional Leaders led by the Honourable
Inkosi Patekile Holomisa had a day-long negotiating meeting with an ad hoc
Cabinet Committee led by the then Deputy President, Mr Jacob Zuma, and
comprising all the relevant line function Ministers, including the Minister
for Local Government and Traditional Affairs.

A formal agreement was entered into in terms of which traditional leaders
undertook not to boycott the Local Government Elections in consideration of
the formal promise received that Chapters 7 and 12 of the Constitution would
be amended to ensure that the powers and functions of Traditional Leaders
would not be obliterated by the implementation of the Municipal Structures
Act and other municipal legislation.

Nine years later, on the 26th of August 2009, a Member of Parliament, Mr
Peter Smith, asked President Zuma in the National Assembly when Chapters 7
and 12 of the Constitution would be amended as promised on the 30th of
November 2000. President Zuma's response was that the undertaking that was
made to amend the Constitution was merely a recommendation and not a solemn
agreement. And he added that the Cabinet did not accept that recommendation.

I immediately pointed out that I too was in Cabinet at that time, as the
Minister of Home Affairs, and while I incessantly raised the need to discuss
and implement this promise, I could not remember it having been discussed in
Cabinet at all. I then stated in Parliament my distress over seeing my
country governed through deception. Traditional leaders delivered on their
promise and supported the elections, and the person who signed on the dotted
line to execute Government's promise is now our country's President.

President Thabo Mbeki also pledged that if the powers and functions of
traditional leaders were obliterated by the Municipal Structures Act and
other legislation, he would amend the Constitution. He made this pledge in a
letter to Inkosi Mzimela, the then Chairperson of the National House of
Traditional Leaders. But it was never fulfilled. The legislation passed in
2005 failed to address the obliteration of the powers and functions of
traditional leaders and the present legislative framework is proving to be
an unmitigated disaster for our institution.

For decades now, traditional leaders have witnessed the institution of
Ubukhosi being sidelined while the powers, functions and role of traditional
leaders are increasingly diminished. The Coalition of Traditional Leaders
fought hard to ensure the survival of the powers and functions of
traditional leadership through the various waves of local government reform.
Unfortunately the debates, vision and cohesiveness of that Coalition did not
carry over in any significant way into parliamentary activities.

As with any institution, when one begins to tamper with the form, the
substance is changed. As traditional leaders, we had a community governance
structure that worked, was fair and produced good results for our people.
But Government sought to chop and change it into something different and is
now grappling with the problems, contradictions and difficulties it has
created. In the end, it is our people who suffer.

Traditional leaders have participated in a number of consultative processes
relating to their position in local government structures. But our input was
only sought after the draft legislation had been formulated and policies
were already established. In the end, the massive input provided by
traditional leaders did not produce any tangible change to what had already
been decided, in spite of numerous promises having been made at the highest
level of government that the aspirations of traditional leaders would be
accommodated.

In the entire long process of local government policy formulation,
traditional leaders have been consulted in a purely perfunctory manner, more
for the purpose of letting us know what was going to be done with our
institution than to seek our input. Rather than recognising and protecting
traditional communities as a specific model of societal organisation,
Government has sought to slot the various components of traditional
leadership into the existing legal system developed by Western values and
principles.

Accordingly, traditional leaders were slotted into the mould of municipal
government; land was slotted into the system of centralised government
administration; and traditional jurisdiction was slotted into the overall
judicial system, leaving indigenous law in limbo. The newly appointed Chief
Justice has remarked about this anomaly.

There are many and diverse problems faced by our communities. Many families
who used to live off the land are now dependent on social grants. Poverty is
more visible, more pressing and more of a threat than ever before, and the
problem of food security is increasing. Traditional leaders can promote
sustainable rural development to address these problems. But we must be
empowered by legislation and funding to do what we are capable of doing.

On 19 July 2011, the Acting Minister for Cooperative Governance and
Traditional Affairs, the Honourable Nathi Mthethwa spoke at the Jewish
Centre in Durban and made the following statement: "Strong relations between
elected representatives and traditional leadership are the cornerstone of
service delivery." Those are visionary words. But unless the partnership
between local government and traditional leadership is changed in real terms
through amending legislation, no number of summits or talk shops will be
able to create those strengthened relations.

I take no pleasure in coming here today with a message that seems so
divisive. But I feel we must be honest with one another if we are to create
a genuine partnership. In the end, preventing traditional leaders from
fulfilling their role is detrimental to local governance, and to the future
of South Africa.