For residents of towns and cities across South Africa, the recent local government elections were never only about politics. The ballots have been counted, but the question that matters most for ordinary households is whether the councils that emerge will finally deliver working water, reliable electricity, functioning infrastructure and a safer, more stable environment in which people live and work.
In more than 130 councils across the country, voters delivered a clear verdict: no single party won outright, and coalition arrangements must now be negotiated. Raymond Parsons, professor at the North-West University School of Business and Governance, told Moneyweb’s Jeremy Maggs in a podcast interview that this outcome, whatever its complications, carries a message that should be heard first and foremost as one about service to the public.
“Voters don’t want personalities, they want policies and outcomes that will make a difference on the ground,” Parsons said. In other words, the people who use municipal services every day are asking not who occupies the mayor’s office, but whether the taps run, the lights stay on and the rates they pay are converted into visible value.
Parsons began on a positive note. South Africa has once again held free and fair elections, he argued, and that predictability matters for the economy, for business confidence and for the country’s standing. A credible electoral process, in his view, is a key instrument for holding political leadership accountable for outcomes, and the quality of the election offers a good chance that the outcomes will be better too.
The immediate period, however, is one of both opportunity and uncertainty. Coalition talks are underway, and until they conclude, residents and businesses alike face a waiting game. Parsons identified three requirements if the promise of these results is to be realised. First, the coalition arrangements must be designed to serve voter interests. Second, political leaders must forge structures that ensure stable and effective government at local level, on a much bigger scale than before. Third, given the scale of what must be done, new local governments will need to collaborate with stakeholders, in particular business, through consultation and public-private partnerships.
That collaboration, he stressed, is ultimately about livelihoods. “At the end of the day, at some point somebody has to build the factory, hire the worker, sink the shaft, finance the small business and take the entrepreneurial risk.” The economic climate created at local level, he argued, is now as important for South Africa’s future economic performance as the national one.
Maggs pressed on a point of direct public concern: who governs a municipality matters less to businesses than whether basic services actually work. Parsons agreed. Collectively, business is not interested in personalities but in policies that are certain and predictable. Investors and employers want to know where they stand with water, electricity, rates and taxes, and corruption. An enabling environment, he said, is what allows the business community to promote growth and job creation locally, something that benefits every resident of a town, not only its entrepreneurs.
Meanwhile, he noted that President Cyril Ramaphosa has said more than once that while monetary and fiscal policy matter nationally, creating a favourable investment climate must also become a bottom-up process. Local authorities, Parsons argued, have a responsibility to create an environment at local level that serves not only the business community but all the voters in their area. The point, from a business perspective, is no longer about personalities but about getting policies right and, above all, ensuring they are implemented.
The burden of municipal dysfunction has fallen disproportionately on small businesses, with a cascade effect on jobs and livelihoods, and Parsons called this tremendously important in shaping the agenda of the new councils, in the metropolitan areas and in the many medium and smaller town councils. He urged local authorities to ease and reduce the costs of doing business, whether through electricity tariffs or local by-laws, and pointed to a simple, achievable step: complying with the national rule that small business invoices be paid within 30 days, a change he said would make an enormous difference to cash flow. That, in turn, requires municipal finances to be in order.
For citizens, the takeaway is accountability. Parsons said business now has an opportunity to engage the new leadership through lobbying and advocacy, and, like other stakeholders, to hold the new political leaders to account. The discussion, part of Moneyweb’s coverage of the question of whether new coalitions can turn around South Africa’s struggling municipalities, is available at https://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-podcasts/moneyweb-midday/can-new-coalitions-turn-around-sas-struggling-municipalities/. The full interview closes with Maggs introducing Raymond Parsons as professor at the North-West University School of Business and Governance, a conversation that ultimately returns to the same civic point: local government exists to serve the people who depend on it daily, and the coalition era will be judged on whether it does exactly that.