“We’re going after them. Not as agents of broken local governments, but as individual delinquents.” This is the message from the Democratic Alliance (DA) in laying criminal charges against the municipal managers of nine of South Africa’s most dysfunctional municipalities.

The DA’s parliamentary leader George Michalakis announced the move last week. He said that the party had decided to take this course of action as the officials in question had run municipalities for a protracted period that had received repeated disclaimed audit opinions, engaged in serious financial mismanagement, and failed to implement the recommendations of the Auditor-General.

Charges are being laid against ten managers (one from each of eight of the municipalities, and two from the ninth) under section 173 of the Municipal Finance Management Act. This enables responsible officials to be held personally accountable for malfeasance.

The municipalities are: Makana (Makhanda/Grahamstown and surrounds) and Sunday River Valley, both in the Eastern Cape; Masilonyana (Theunissen and surrounds), Nketoana (administered in Reitz), Mohokare (headquartered in Zastron), and Maluti-a-Phofung (Harrismith) (all in the Free State); Ditsobotla (admistrative seat in Lichtenburg) and Ngaka Modiri Molema (Mahikeng), both in North West; and Kannaland (Ladismith) in the Western Cape.

All the municipalities are local municipalities, except Ngaka Modiri Molema, which is a district municipality (a local municipality delivers services directly to residents, while a district municipality oversees and coordinates several local municipalities across a larger region).

The DA linked the appointment and performance of these officials to the politicisation and capture of municipal institutions, overwhelmingly by the African National Congress (ANC) (Kannaland is governed by a coalition of local parties).

“The municipalities are milked dry on their watch and South Africans are left without basic services," Michalakis said. “It is time that these ten individuals are no longer recycled by the ANC but are forced to account by our criminal justice system.”

He added that it was high time that the protection afforded to incompetent officials ended.

While Section 173 prosecutions are an option under the law, they have been rare. Numbers are hard to come by, but a parliamentary question from 2020 found that only 67 people had been prosecuted since 2006, with only nine convictions. There have been a few subsequently, including the conviction of Nelson Thammy Kubheka, former municipal manager of Dr JS Moroka (a municipality in north-western Mpumalanga and bordering Gauteng and Limpopo), for tender irregularities.

Experts have called for these sanctions to be more widely used. Terence Corrigan, who is an Institute of Race Relations researcher and author of a forthcoming study on the state of local government, told The Common Sense that the use of Section 173 to hold individuals to account was part of a package of changes necessary to get local government working: “What the DA is doing has an element of electioneering to it I’m sure, but it’s a valid and valuable thing to do. We’ve seen this over and over: errant officials create a problem, sometimes intentionally, and then resign. The institution is left weakened by the abuse of its systems and carrying responsibility for what has happened. For the individual, this operates like a get-out-of-jail-free card. If he or she is connected, chances are a job awaits elsewhere. Bad actors will think twice when they have to carry the can personally.”

With an eye on the upcoming local government elections, due in November, Michalakis pledged that the DA would do better and not repeat the ANC’s pattern of governance: “The DA’s plan is clear: appoint competent officials on merit, enforce accountability without exception and professionalise municipal administration through continuous skills development.”