18 March 2024
Good Governance Africa (GGA) rated South Africa’s eight (8) metros, 205 local municipalities, and 44 district municipalities.
“We are enormously proud to be rated as the number one secondary city in South Africa,” said Alderman Gert Combrink, Acting Executive Mayor of Drakenstein Municipality, which covers Paarl, Wellington, Mbekweni, Gouda, Saron, Hermon and Simondium in the Western Cape. “These achievements underline our firm commitment to and steady implementation of good governance, sound financial management, and excellent service delivery.”
The Western Cape made a clean sweep in the 2024 GGA ratings. In the metro category, the City of Cape Town topped the list. In the local municipality category (B3), Swartland Municipality ranked first, and in the category for district municipalities that do not supply water, the Cape Winelands District Municipality ranked first.
The GPI 2024 report also states that the Western Cape’s municipalities dominate the upper echelons of local municipal performance in South Africa. In 2021, 13 of the top 20 highest-ranked municipalities were in the Western Cape (Drakenstein Municipality ranked first in the Western Cape as secondary city.) In 2024, that number rose to an impressive 15.
According to the GPI 2024 report, all municipalities were evaluated according to four categories:
• Administration and governance: This encompasses aspects of accountability, compliance, financial management, financial soundness, and human resource management.
• Leadership and management: Both political and administrative leadership plays a key role in ensuring functional local government.
• Planning, monitoring and evaluation: This category measures the performance of municipalities in terms of the extent to which they have met their responsibilities in annual planning, monitoring, and evaluation requirements.
• Service delivery (weighted most): Ensuring basic service delivery is the core responsibility of local government. This criterium focuses on access provided to four key services: piped water, sanitation, electricity, and refuse removal. In this category, the quality of services and the level of support which municipalities provide to the most vulnerable (indigent) are also rated.
“The latter (criterium) weighted more due to the importance that the Constitution and associated legislative frameworks stress on the role which local governments has in terms of distributing core services to households,” the report states.
Among the core inputs of the GPI are the Auditor-General of South Africa’s (AGSA) annual Municipal Finance Management Act reports and the national Department of Water and Sanitation’s Blue Drop, Green Drop and No Drop reports.
“Since 2008, Drakenstein Municipality has achieved 16 consecutive unqualified audit opinions from the Auditor-General of South Africa, of which nine were clean audits,” said Alderman Combrink.
“Recently we also aced Blue Drop certifications for both our Welvanpas Water Treatment Works and Hermon Water Supply System, scoring a remarkable 96% and 95.7% respectively. In addition, we earned a No Drop Award (82%), as well as a third place nationally in the category Best Technical Site for our Welvanpas Water Treatment Works, located in Wellington. Overall Drakenstein Municipality received a Municipal Blue Drop Score of 94.1%,” he said.
The GPI report states that local municipalities are a critical immediate point of contact for millions of citizens across the country. The GPI further considered factors such as the province within which a municipality is located, the population size of a municipality, the population density of a municipality, as well as voter turnout in the local and national government elections.
Alderman Combrink concludes: “Receiving such recognition requires a huge team effort and a consistent level of high-quality work, for which I salute our Council and each employee of Drakenstein Municipality - from our street sweepers to our administrators. I am extremely proud of everyone who is dedicated to further growing Drakenstein into a city of excellence for all our residents, visitors and investors.”
* Secondary cities are geographically defined urban jurisdictions or centres performing vital governance, logistical, and production functions at a sub-national or sub-metropolitan region level within a system of cities in a country.
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Issued by: Communication and Marketing, Drakenstein Municipality
