A Year of Living Dangerously? Urban Assertiveness, Cooperative Governance and the First Year of Three Coalition-Led Metropolitan Municipalities in South Africa

ABSTRACT

South African cities enjoy significant constitutional autonomy and financial independence, meaning that they are well-placed to assert themselves against national and provincial governments, especially in situations of political discordance between different levels of government. This article considers the first year of multi-party coalition-led opposition governance in three South African cities, in attempting to better understand the relationship between cities’ constitutional powers and functions, on the one hand, and their modes of governance, on the other. It focuses on national or provincial attempts to undermine urban governance in opposition-run cities, as well as instances of ‘urban assertiveness’ – city governments conducting themselves in ways that depart from, or oppose, government priorities at regional or national levels.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Neil Murray for comments on a previous draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Marius Pieterse http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5163-8846

Notes

1. A breakdown of the election results is available through www.elections.org.za.

2. Cape Town is also governed by the opposition, but has the benefit of a politically supportive provincial government, since the DA governs in the Western Cape. The three ANC-run metros (Mangaung, Buffalo City and eThekwini) are all in ANC-run provinces.

3. These are their respective inauguration addresses, ‘100 days in government’ speeches, ‘state of the city’ addresses and addresses accompanying the adoption of their 2017/2018 budgets.

4. In terms of section 155 of the Constitution read with section 2 of the Municipal Structures Act, Metropolitan Municipalities exercise their powers exclusively, whereas other municipalities share their powers at district and regional levels. Metropolitan municipalities are those which satisfy requirements justifying a high level of independence and an urban, developmental focus. The intricacies of these requirements, as well as governance arrangements in regional and district municipalities, do not concern me here.

5. The effect of budgetary and IDP cycles in all three cities was that adjustment budgets could be passed only early in 2017, whereas ‘new’ budgets and IDPs were only adopted in May of 2017, nine months after the ‘new’ governments took office.

Additional information

Funding

The research in this article was enabled by the support of the National Research Foundation.