The South African Local Government Association (Salga), the employer body representing the country’s 257 municipalities, wants greater collaboration between local, provincial and national government to address the challenges facing municipalities that continue to undermine their ability to deliver essential services.On Thursday, the SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu), the country’s largest union in local government, representing about 160,000 of the country’s nearly 300,000 municipal workers, embarked on a “national day of action”. Samwu members marched to the National Treasury, where they delivered a list of demands to Treasury and Salga officials and representatives from the department of co-operative governance and traditional affairs. Samwu was supported by Cosatu and its affiliates. The march shone a spotlight on issues affecting municipal workers, pertaining to the underfunding of local government, the Treasury’s “interference” in the implementation of collective agreements, non-payment of salaries and benefits, and outsourcing, among other issues. The local government sector is grappling with poor service delivery, maladministration, lack of capacity and corruption, and its worsening state has spurred the government to focus the second phase of Operation Vulindlela on fixing councils. Vulindlela is a joint initiative of the Treasury and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office created in 2020 to address bottlenecks stifling economic growth. Tabling the local government audit outcomes for the 2024/25 financial year at the co-operative governance and traditional affairs portfolio committee meeting in parliament recently, auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke said of the 257 municipalities, only 39 achieved clean audits — down from 41 in the previous period (2023/24). While the City of Cape Town was the only metro in the country to receive a clean audit opinion in 2023/24, with three others achieving unqualified audit opinions with findings and four others qualified with findings, none of the eight metros achieved a clean audit in 2024/25 and the number of metros with qualified audit opinions increased from four to five. During the Samwu march on Thursday, Salga deputy president Xola Phakathi received Samwu’s list of demands on behalf of the association. Salga president Bheki Stofile said: “We are going to engage our municipalities and deal with internal weaknesses. We are also going to engage the provincial and national government to say, let’s collaborate in addressing issues felt by people in our communities.” The Samwu leadership demanded that the R10.3bn politically facilitated agreement the City of Joburg entered into with Samwu late last year, aimed at aligning staff salaries with those of employees in other metropolitan municipalities, be implemented. In the deal the metro committed to pay a minimum of R1.2bn and up to a maximum of R2bn by March 2026; a minimum of R5bn and up to a maximum of R6bn by July 2026; and R4.1bn by July 2027. In a media briefing on Wednesday, Joburg mayor Dada Morero said the deal would be implemented but the city needed to discuss the timeframes with organised labour. Stofile described Samwu’s demands as “reasonable”, saying collective agreements entered into by parties were enforceable. “It must be respected. We accept Morero’s approach regarding the agreement. If you enter into a collective agreement, it should be accepted by everyone. Parties were not coerced to enter into those agreements,” said Stofile. Finance minister Enoch Godongwana had previously expressed serious reservations about the wage agreement, saying it was illegal and should be scrapped, failing which the Treasury would withhold equitable share allocation to the metro.In a media briefing on Wednesday, the Treasury announced it had withheld R3.6bn to the city due to financial mismanagement.The SACP said the actions of the National Treasury, including withholding critical funding from local government institutions, were intended to force municipalities to implement austerity programmes and to remove constitutionally protected administrative powers. The SACP said: “This pushback by local government employees is not only workers defending their jobs but, much more than that, is the working class reclaiming their position as drivers of public policy and public services. “We support Samwu in their fight against corruption in the local government sphere. It is corruption that has caused the legitimacy crisis in local government and thereby weakened the local state.” mkentanel@businessday.co.za