DA CALLS FOR CRUCIAL LEGISLATIVE CHANGES TO HOLD FAILING KZN MUNICIPALITIES ACCOUNTABLE
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During the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) budget debate, the Democratic Alliance (DA) voiced deep concerns over structural inefficiencies and financial imbalances.
The party is calling on the provincial legislature to grant expanded oversight powers to hold municipalities directly accountable for financial mismanagement and service delivery failures.
While the KZN COGTA budget has increased by 5.29% (from R1.931 billion in 2025/26 to R2.033 billion in 2026/27), the DA warns that this increase is largely eaten up by inflation and structural personnel costs rather than driving transformation.
The Budget's Three Critical Flaws
The DA argues that the current budget allocation is functionally flawed in three major areas:
Salary Imbalance: A massive 71% of the budget is locked into personnel costs (45% for employee compensation and 26% for Izinduna, Amakhosi, and Traditional Council Secretaries).
This leaves a meager 29% for critical municipal operations, project costs, and disaster management.
Lack of Enforcement: Standard investigative procedures (Section 106) and interventions (Section 154) lack dedicated funding for consequence management. As a result, disciplinary cases routinely drag past 90 days, allowing corruption and mismanagement to continue unchecked.
Unfunded Mandates: The rollout of vehicles to Amakhosi traditional leaders is not transparently budgeted. This lack of financial planning risks diverting vital resources away from municipal support and disaster response.
Confronting Structural Weaknesses: The DA's Proposal
To address the persistent lack of accountability in failing local governments, the DA is urging the KZN Legislature to dramatically expand the scope of Section 132 hearings under the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA).
These hearings would empower the KZN COGTA Portfolio Committee to directly summon and hold municipal mayors, municipal managers, and Municipal Public Accounts Committees (MPACs) to account.
Currently, the approved Annual Operating Plan (AOP) allows for only 10 hearing slots—a number the DA calls "woefully inadequate" to monitor KZN’s 54 municipalities. The party is calling on the Legislature to immediately grant COGTA significantly more slots.
Strategic Measures to Refine the COGTA Budget
To transform KZN COGTA from a department of "hope without power" into an active driver of delivery, the DA has put forward four key refinements:
Establish a Consequence Management Fund: Set up a ring-fenced allocation specifically dedicated to funding municipal corruption investigations, disciplinary processes, and prosecutions.
Create Community Accountability Forums: Institutionalize formal, citizen-led forums to directly report service delivery failures and demand immediate government action.
Drastically Reduce Consultant Dependency: Invest heavily in building internal municipal capacity rather than outsourcing critical operational functions to expensive private consultants.
Introduce Transparent Vehicle Funding: Ensure the rollout of vehicles to traditional leaders is explicitly and transparently budgeted to avoid destabilizing other critical service delivery priorities.
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