The role of provinces in South Africa is affirmed by the constitutional provision for the separation of powers and cooperative governance.
However, the practice has been one of a more centralised policy approach with national government always getting its way and imposing policies on provinces and municipalities underscoring a move rooted in favour of centralised governance over that of federalism as envisaged in the constitution. The results: more inequalities in access to services, overlapping functions not addressing real needs of communities and toothless provinces serving and advancing national masters.
The shifting political landscape
The 2024 general elections gave us a glance of what the future may hold for provinces with Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal falling into coalitions, joining the long-standing lone wolf in the Western Cape which has been the only province not governed by the ANC. The Western Cape has long been a litmus test in demonstrating that changes at the political level will not cascade down to communities in the current arrangements where national government has assumed a God-like position in dictating national policy, the allocation of functions, the distribution of resources and resolution of disputes in areas of shared interests with provinces.
Provincial autonomy under challenge
What the DA will tell you about being an opposition party in charge of a province is that, without real provincial autonomy and working under the ANC (a party in favour of centralisation) at national government, is that there really is just a little that you can do policy-wise. National government always gets its way due to the ANC's stranglehold over Parliament in policy making leaving provincial legislature to adopt policies aligned with those at national level.
Western Cape Premier Alan Winde cannot do much policy-wise working under the ANC at national government level, according to the writer. Picture: X
This has continued because from the opposition benches both inside and outside Parliament, the DA has remained the only strong voice calling for greater shift towards true federalism which they deem as the answer to South Africa's development challenges. They have made calls for the decentralisation of decision-making from national to provincial governments, the extension of provincial functions through the full devolution of functions such as policing to strengthen their general crime and gang-violence fighting strategies, and education to provinces to strengthen the decision-making roles of provincial MECs of education, expansion of the legislative mandate of provincial legislature to address and meet the needs of citizens in line with the realities in their communities, allow for the fiscal autonomy of provinces in line with Section 227(4) of the constitution to fund their own developmental initiatives reflecting the needs of their citizens and not the current approach where provincial development projects are expected to reflect national development policies that are often not in line with their own needs.
The fiscal challenge
The biggest threat to federalism all over the world is fiscal federalism. National government's extensive control of provincial issues is fuelled by the lack of fiscal autonomy in provinces related to their limited taxation powers and their reliance on the division of revenue and other fiscal transfers from national government. This plays well in the hands of those advocating for the restructuring of provinces in favour of expanding the powers of national government.
Global context and local solutions
In today's globally connected world, the traditional economics models of stabilisation and distribution functions which concerns the use of government's power of spending and taxation to redistribute income, in particular by providing assistance to poor households in an economy which were considered the primary responsibility of central governments while the allocative function inclusive of the production or provision of goods and services, such as water and sanitation, electricity, environment, fire protection or garbage collection were allocated to subcentral governments - provinces and municipalities can no longer work in a country like ours where inequality, unemployment and poverty remain government's Achilles heel.
Primarily the areas of concern for national government, there is experience from countries like Canada, India, Germany and Mexico showing the role that provincial governments can play in addressing those challenges to alleviate the burden on central governments to do so. The dream of a developmental state rests upon the collective effort of all spheres of government and greater and true devolution of functions and roles of provinces guaranteeing their autonomy both from a financing and policy point of view may be the key to unlock so much of the potential this country has. The developmental agenda needs to be localised to provinces and municipalities with central governments only making resources available when needed.
The path forward
We need more voices to support the DA's fight against the shift towards authoritarian state favoured by the ANC through policies such as the National Health Insurance and Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill, which are all based on a desire to take away powers from provinces. Otherwise, there will be more coalitions provincially in 2029 representing the democratic choices of citizens with no meaningful change should the autonomy of provinces be absent.
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