Date: 07/07/2007

Source: Western Cape Provincial Government

Title: Rasool: Integrated Development Plan Mini Conference

Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool addresses Integrated Development Plan (IDP) Mini Conference on the future and role of provinces

Debates emerging out of the process towards the Provincial Growth Development Strategy (PGDS) and the review of IDPs are beginning to show that our debate around the future and role of provinces in our governance set-up is still an unformed debate. We are missing each other in this debate and therefore are in danger of missing the real complexity in the role of the sub-national sphere within a developmental state.

The debate about provinces cannot simply be about their numbers, should there be nine or four provinces? This does not mean that the number of provinces will or should not be reduced, but the starting point is not the number, that is an outcome of a more complex debate.

On the other hand the opposition is simplifying the debate to one of power by raising the idea that the debate on provinces is to gerrymander an election outcome. This only confirms their absence from real governance and the challenges that go with it.

The debate, judging by the lessons out of the IDP and PGDS, has to be about the developmental role of provinces. The role of provinces has been brought into sharp focus at the Metro Growth and Development Summit when Cape Town spoke about fulfilling only their constitutional mandate over basic services, basic infrastructure and such like. They did not share the urgency about job creation and economic growth.

Given that nations compete globally more effectively at the sub-national level, whether provincial/national, metropolitan, district or municipal we need to discuss what constitutes this substantial level, how do they interrelate and how do their collective efforts ensure that on the ground relevance informs the national policy efforts.

In fact our experience is that local government boundaries, in addition to standing on constitutional mandates, are maybe too small to ensure a real developmental impact. This gives rise to the idea of functional regions. These do not threaten jurisdictional boundaries or authority, but creates the need for a sphere that can ensure cross-boundary or functional planning.

Examples abound:

* If Cape Town frees land in Atlantis for housing the spoor, they will only reinforce bad apartheid planning if there is no co-ordination and joint planning with Saldanhabaai and its plans for economic growth. It is here that province has an overview and therefore a critical role.
* Can the three million people of Cape Town deal with the impact of global warming if there is not an overview discussion with the Overberg where our water catchments are, is critical and which provides the lifeblood to Cape Town.
* Similarly you cannot plan for public transport if the discussion does not cross jurisdictional boundaries.

If we do not define a developmental role for provinces and if we do not allow for such sub-national governance to ensure that we locate planning mechanisms at the level of functional regions then we will have parochialism and non-developmental governance. It is at functional regional level that the sub-national develops economically and competes globally.

Sub-national governance at provincial level has a more immediate sense of the economic geography: the direction of economic activity, the direction of investment, the optimal economic sectors to grow, the movement of people in search of opportunity, the location of infrastructure and the location of services.

But often sub-national governance provincial and local does not have the wherewithal (mandates and resources) to respond to these developmental challenges and unless this function is built into the definition of the role of provinces, then provinces will be a powerless entity within a developmental state and will increasingly become discredited.

On the other hand, there has to be a review of provinces. Realities 13 years later have thrown up anomalies none more so than between the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape. Apartheid has specifically underdeveloped the Eastern Cape, creating a combination of extreme and general poverty with an institutional and infrastructural deficit. These factors combine to create poverty indexes that correctly give the Eastern Cape a net increase in fiscal transfers from national. But the gap remains between the new money and the capacity for and rate of service delivery and institutional improvement. The poor then use their own economic intelligence to migrate to where housing, jobs, pensions and schools are more efficiently distributed. However, the Eastern Cape money does not follow the poor.

On the other hand, the Western Cape has been the perverse beneficiary of apartheid resulting in a lower poverty index and therefore negative fiscal flows. But its institutional capacities to deliver services and opportunities to the poor means that the poor migrate to it and then put pressure on services which ironically have to cope with budget cuts.

The fact that money cannot follow people may well mean that if the two provinces were combined, both would benefit from the poverty index and fiscal flows so that where people go for services can be kept functioning while the institutional capacity can be spread equitably.

So the debate about the future of provinces is not a simple debate. It has to be approached in a way that ensures the fundamental questions, 'what does our developmental State need at this point?'

At the end of the day the intergovernmental regime we have will be crucial if we are to allow the sub-national spheres to look well after its people and to compete globally.

Issued by: Office of the Premier, Western Cape Provincial Government
7 May 2007

Last Modified: Tue, 08 May 2007 12:20:00 SAST