GOVERNMENT DYSFUNCTION: INPUT SOUGHT ON PROVINCIAL, MUNICIPAL ASSISTANCE BILL

GOVERNMENT DYSFUNCTION: INPUT SOUGHT ON PROVINCIAL, MUNICIPAL ASSISTANCE BILL

• 10 July 2023
• Local & Provincial Government
• SA Legal Academy

The Department of Co-operative Governance & Traditional Affairs has called for input by 26 August 2023 on a draft Intergovernmental Monitoring, Support & Interventions Bill.

Its purpose is ‘to provide for targeted support to provinces and municipalities in need of assistance’ by regulating Constitution section 100 and 139 processes and their implementation. Where a provincial or local government ‘cannot or does not fulfil an executive obligation in terms of the Constitution or legislation’, sections 100 and 139 respectively empower national government to intervene in provincial administration, and provincial government to intervene in municipal administration.

According to a memorandum on the draft Bill’s objects, as things now stand ‘there is no universal national legislation in place regulating interventions in provinces in terms of section 100. However, ‘Chapter 13 of the Local Government: Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA), 2003, regulates section 139 of the Constitution in regard to interventions in municipalities, but only where the cause of the intervention is of a financial nature’.

The draft Bill seeks to close this gap – without encroaching on the MFMA. To that end, its provisions will apply only to ‘discretionary financial interventions’ in the context of a municipality’s failure to provide basic services or to meet its financial commitments.

• draft Bill

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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