[I thought the ANC’s plan to have 10 provinces to begin with was completely idiotic. Now they want to scrap them! I wonder what it cost this country to move to 10 provinces to begin with. By the way, Zimbabwe, which originally only had 3 provinces (as best I recall), was later changed by Mugabe also to 10! (Maybe its because that’s the number of fingers they have on both their hands and that’s how high they could count?)

Why didn’t the ANC just retain 4 provinces? Probably, just because they wanted to do something different – just for the sake of being different. Who knows.

Now they want 5 provinces?

Personally, I think, if you have morons in charge, I don’t see how reducing the provinces will change much. It might just increase the budget per province which means bigger amounts to squander or steal.

I don’t think these high level changes will change much.

Notice that blacks love management stuff. They love it. Changing names, etc… but their PROBLEMS… always… are at the lower level. Its always a problem of how you do the WORK and how well you do the work. You can have as many managers as you want, but if the worker lay around sleeping on the job, stealing, etc – what difference is it going to make? I watch blacks and whites at work every day of my life… and I see super-intelligent (by black standards), blacks wasting their time, playing around, etc… with no sense of urgency.

In the past I described the problems as being at two levels – one is strategy (management), the other as tactical (worker level), and I’ve said blacks really fall down at the tactical level. They can have all the visions they want but they are useless tactically. Whites are good at both. Blacks can attend meetings, hold presentations, sit in chairs in front of TV cameras and have big bold “strategic visions” all they want… but at a tactical level it will all fall down ESPECIALLY if they’ve kicked most of the whites out. This is a fact of life in Africa, and the ANC is just as useless at this level as the rest of Africa. Jan]

SOUTH Africa’s nine provinces and legislatures are set to be scrapped in favour of four or five regions, according to a discussion document circulating in government.

The confidential document is titled “Towards a Discussion on the Division of Powers and Functions between the Three Spheres of Government”. It was drafted following a Cabinet decision to review the functioning of the government and strengthen the administrative capacity of the state.

The ANC is conducting its own reasearch into the matter.

The document, in the possession of the Sunday Times, reaches no firm conclusion, but spells out scenarios which would see radical changes. It is, however, firm that the current set-up is hampering development. A change would have to be ratified by Cabinet and Parliament would have to amend the Constitution.

The document says that if provinces were to be scrapped, this could be done by:

Abolishing provincial legislatures while retaining current administrations with an elected executive;
Abolishing provincial legislatures while retaining current administrations, with an executive appointed by the national government;
Abolishing provincial legislatures with no appointed or elected executive, with the current administration retained; or by
Abolishing legislatures as well as provincial administrations.

“It is noteworthy that concerns [about delivery] arise not from failure in the management of political or social diversity, but mostly because of perceived shortcomings in the implementation capabilities of the state as a whole. These, in turn, are dependent largely upon the effectiveness of provincial and local government,” says the document.

The document does not suggest time frames, but Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi told a press conference in December last year that he was “firmly putting on the table” the issue of changing the provincial make-up of the country before the 2009 general elections.

“What if we decide that we do not want nine provinces?” he asked.

In an indication that discussions within the government are at an advanced stage, the document says the scrapping of cross-boundary municipalities last year and the community protests that followed raised the question as to whether provincial boundaries should be “substantially” changed.

The key objective in changing provincial boundaries, says the document, would be to reduce the number of provinces; options included a return to the previous four provinces, or a five-provinces option, where the old Transvaal would be re-established, and the Northern and Western Cape combined.

The document says the four-province option would allow better use of the administrative capacity of the Western Cape and Gauteng.

The five-provinces option would retain the Eastern Cape because it was large — although the document warns that this would mean keeping “one of the weaker provinces, from an administrative perspective”.

“The reversion to four provinces would probably create more scope for taxes, such as a piggybacked income tax, to be devolved to provincial level if this were considered desirable. Each province would then have access to a reasonably strong tax base in relation to needs.”

Provincial powers and responsibilities would be distributed between local and national government. District municipalities would probably become more important as a location for many of the current provincial functions, while others would be shifted to national.

If there were to be no elected or appointed executive, current provincial administrations would become “deconcentrated units” of the national government.

The government has repeatedly voiced concerns about provinces’ failure to spend money on infrastructure and social services. An accompanying document, “Concept Paper on the Role of Provinces”, says the government has committed to building more houses, providing better-quality education and improving hospitals, roads and other facilities and basic services.

The government has even taken greater control of some provincial functions, such as the delivery of social grants.

“Government has also promised to substantially increase the level of public infrastructure spending. Thus provincial underspending on capital budgets is a big problem with respect to the ability to deliver services effectively,” the document says.

It also says the distribution of legislative powers between provincial and national government results in provincial legislatures having very little to do.

Source: AllAfrica.Com
URL: http://allafrica.com/stories/200608280451.htm…/p>