Water services education and training needs of councillors in the Local Government Development Agenda (LGDA)

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study describes and analyses the water governance and developmental water services education and training needs of councillors in water services authorities (WSAs) in the Northern Cape Province in order to enable them to fulfil their responsibilities as required by the legislative framework in the new dispensation in South Africa. The new South African Constitution ushered in a new legislative framework, which recognises that developmental water supply, sanitation facilities as basic services are local government matters, and that they are in the functional area of concurrent national and provincial legislative competence. The Water Services Act No. 108 of 1997 and a number of Acts of Parliament thereafter, which are a spine for a local government developmental agenda (LGDA) in South Africa, give effect to this determination. Collectively, these Acts and policies have set the LGDA or modernisation of local government for change and marked a departure from the selection, recruitment and deployment of councillors without minimum engineering and technical skills in water and infrastructure planning and development portfolios.This invariably imposes new leadership responsibilities upon a range of hydropolitical councillors in WSAs, and creates the need for a redefined model of representation on the part of councillors from ―resemblance to public capability, accountability, responsibility and responsiveness‖ (Sartori 1968: 465). With the current calibre and breed of councillors in water portfolios and infrastructure planning and development, it appears that the country is facing a leadership crisis that can strike at the very roots of the democratic values of the LGDA system. Without effective, innovative, creative and committed leadership, all anti-poverty strategies may just plug in superficial solutions rather than tackle the root of the problem, namely governance crises in WSAs. Accordingly, 'good enough governance' or radical restructuring of the recruitment, selection and deployment policy in the current water crisis in the Northern Cape should act as a decontaminator or antiseptic in a germ-infested area (Cloete 2006:6-19).To extend the analogy further in terms of good enough water governance, the selection, recruitment and deployment of appropriately qualified representatives in bulk water infrastructure planning and development may lead to long-term hydropolitical adaptive capacity to respond proactively to water scarcity in the Northern Cape whereby a discernible set of water governance values and principles will benefit all citizens. Using mixed methods, the researcher found that comparative literature evidence clearly underscores the importance of effective leadership by competent and skilled councillors in water portfolios. It is also significant that academic and independent studies have ignored the oversight role of councillors in water governance. The debates only focus on officials who do not have executive powers under the new LGDA and its administration system. Yet, the current water crisis, extreme weather conditions, climate changes, and protests against poor service delivery provide an opportunity to rethink water governance. The dissertation argues that councillors in water portfolios should have minimum engineering and technical qualifications and that they need to be empowered to be adaptive and apply modern technology solutions. Any reform effort is doomed if this aspect is not addressed sufficiently well in the water sector, as it has been established in this dissertation that there is a clear link between effective leadership and excellent water governance and management.The study is not intended to be prescriptive nor can it claim to be exhaustive, as the researcher continually discovered. In many instances, it may introduce water governance complexities under a LGDA administration and political management system that are unwarranted – and misplaced idealism is always a problem. Thus, for water services to remain a viable instrument of humanity especially at a municipal level, it is concluded that more effective competency-based water councillor education and training (CBWCE&T) programmes are required to equip current and future councillors with the water governance skills and intellectual competencies to address the complex challenges they face. The essence of the CBWCE&T is that developmental water services need to engage in a broader governance agenda integrated with other basic services and mutually reinforcing areas of social adaptive capacity to water scarcity under the LGDA.Researchers in the water sector have neglected the hydropolitical role of councillors in determining water governance and the use of water for socioeconomic and developmental outcomes now subsumed under various poverty eradication policies. The unique contribution of this dissertation is that it focuses on this critical role of councillors and the skills they need to execute water governance institutional oversight role. The researcher makes recommendations for enriching the hydropolitical sociology of local government studies, to match the skills requirements, given the complexity of the LGDA and the numerous challenges for councillors in WSAs in the Northern Cape.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University