The Institute does not define poverty only in terms of financial poverty, but also looks at the broader manifestations of poverty, such as health, education, living conditions, and employment.

 

Poverty challenges were divided into four categories, namely: education, basic services, health, and households with no income. 

 

The broad objective of the project is to help build the capacity of local government in combating poverty. Through the APII workshops this is achieved by helping municipalities to develop best-practice interventions and strategies for their implementation.

 

Given local government’s limited jurisdiction and constitutional authority in the rendering of services, these best-practice interventions have to be practical, realistic, and simple. Local government does not have as much authority and influence in policy making as provincial government. As a result it finds itself in a difficult position in not being able to provide some services. Local government needs to find ways of working around these constraints.

 

There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to combating poverty. Best-practice interventions have to fit the needs and conditions of individual municipalities. Below are a few examples of such interventions as proposed by participants in the workshops that have taken place, as well as some examples of best practices from various sources. These are based on the four categories of education, basic services, health, and households with no income. This week’s newsletter will focus on education and basic services while health and households with no income will be discussed in next week’s newsletter.

 

 

Education is a provincial government portfolio; however, schools are based in local communities which fall under local government. A best practice in dealing with the problem of a lack of local government involvement in education is the inception of a programme called ‘one councillor, one school.’ This initiative was developed by participants at the City Of Johannesburg’s workshop. They proposed that one councillor should be a non-executive member the school governing body (SGB) of a school in their ward irrespective of whether or not they have a child in the school. In this way, councillors can indirectly exert pressure on both the school and the Department of Education.

 

There is a lack of resources such as libraries, computer centres, and laboratories in public schools. To combat this problem, as participants of the Motheo District Municipality (Bloemfontein) proposed, schools within a certain radius of each other can jointly have a shared library, computer centre, or laboratory. Local government can encourage this.

 

Lack of sport and recreational activities in schools causes children to roam the streets. This was a challenge identified by the City of Ekurhuleni’s (East Rand) workshop participants. A solution to this, they say, is for the municipality to create local and district sport leagues which can ultimately go up to provincial and national level, particularly for township schools.

 

 

There are major problems in the provision of basic services such as water, electricity, sanitation, housing, and refuse removal. A core best practice discussed for dealing with issues of basic services is closer co-operation of government departments on local government and provincial level. This means that all departments should have an interface database from which they can access communities’ details as well as their needs. For example, the Department of Social Development has information about which persons have disabilities and, based on this, the provision of housing to these people can be prioritised.

 

Ekurhuleni’s participants said there is a challenge in accessing electricity as people have to travel far to the municipality to buy it. They proposed that the community use cell phones to buy electricity, by sending a message to a service provider quoting their meter number and the amount of electricity; the cost of the electricity can then be deducted from a person’s airtime balance. In this regard, the municipality will have to have a partnership with cellphone service providers. 

 

A best practice in reducing housing backlogs may be for municipalities to own houses or flats, as is the case in Ekurhuleni. These houses can then be sold or rented by a municipality to low-income earners who do not earn enough to qualify for a home loan but earn too much to qualify for an RDP house.  

 

The results of best-practice interventions from these workshops will be published later in the year and all the project beneficiaries will receive the publication. Municipalities can use this publication as a learning tool or reference book. They can use it to learn from the successful experiences of other municipalities that developed opportunities to combat poverty in their municipality.

 

- Nachi Majoe