It supports the proposal to establish a national clearinghouse for legislation impacting local government. However, it is concerning that the draft White Paper on Local Government hardly mentions Parliament or its role in the local governance system, despite the fact that Parliament adopts many of the laws governing municipalities. 

The Draft White Paper must nevertheless be commended for identifying major intergovernmental challenges faced by municipalities. Significantly, it recognises that these challenges are system-wide failures and not problems caused by municipalities alone. Thus, the White Paper rightly focuses the review on the system of local governance, rather than on local government in isolation, as the best route to addressing the current crises. It highlights  that the underperformance of the IGR system in South Africa stems from several factors, including the “national system that regulates, supports and oversees local government is fragmented.” This problem has created excessive and confusing compliance burdens for municipalities due to overlapping and sometimes conflicting departmental systems, leading to different departments requesting the same information. This disjunction has grown over the years, as the White Paper notes, especially between COGTA and the National Treasury as the main culprits. 

Certainly, this is not a new problem, commonly referred to as “overregulation”, an issue previously reported on in the Bulletin and one that has been repeatedly highlighted by government agencies. The Draft White Paper takes a bold step to deal with the issue of overregulation, stating that for the current system to work, “the national government must get its house in order” by organising its statutory obligations in a coherent and coordinated manner to reduce duplication and fragmentation. To this end, the White Paper proposes that a systematic review of the legislative, regulatory and reporting burdens imposed on local government be undertaken. However, the Draft White Paper does not provide guidance on how to undertake such a review. Instead, it proposes that the systematic review of local government legislation be undertaken by the national policy coordination centre for local government - a new body that must be established within 3 months of the policy’s adoption. 

As noted in the Draft White Paper, the logic for adopting a clearinghouse is compelling, given that municipalities operate at the intersection of multiple national departments and are subject to different regulatory instruments. A policy centre that can coordinate reform, reduce duplication, align norms and standards, and act as a credible repository of policy guidance could help bring coherence to the system. This proposal is welcomed, but the effectiveness of such a clearinghouse will depend on special institutional arrangements that would prevent it from becoming just another well-intentioned structure without authority or influence. 

The structural proposals in Chapter 3 of the Draft White Paper would be more robust with clearer guidance on how the clearinghouse should be established. Additionally, the current version would benefit from considering the roles of existing institutions, especially those involved in law-making, like Parliament. Chapter 3 references Parliament without explaining its role in simplifying local government legislation. This is a significant omission, given that Parliament is the most consequential institution in the law-making process and in executive oversight. The absence of Parliament matters not because Parliament must “own” the White Paper process, but because many of the legislative burdens that constrain municipalities were adopted by Parliament and are rooted in national legislation. Therefore, if reform is about fixing the system, then the system includes the national legislature, namely Parliament. Indeed, a reform of the 1998 White Paper that seeks to modernise local government must also grapple with the institution responsible for adopting the laws. That is exactly where Parliament, including its oversight role over national departments, should be positioned as a reform lever, not as a footnote. 

The Draft White Paper could be strengthened by explicitly defining three key roles for Parliament:

• First, it should recognise Parliament as a key actor in sequencing and steering the legislative process that would inevitably follow the White Paper review process, especially if proposals require amendments to the Municipal Structures and Systems Act, including amendments made to the Constitution. 
• Second, it should position Parliament to oversee the conduct of national departments whose regulations and policies impact local government, ensuring a whole-of-government alignment with local government. This would require that the clearinghouse coordinate with both the executive and Parliament. For example, the clearinghouse should regularly report to the relevant parliamentary committees, undertake periodic public reporting on regulatory duplication, and be obliged to bring to Parliament's attention the fiscal and administrative implications of regulatory proposals, including those arising from existing legislative instruments. This would help slow the surge in local government legislation by forcing national departments to adopt an evidence-based approach to lawmaking, requiring departments to think critically before legislating. In this sense, Parliament would not merely be an external stakeholder, but as an institution, it must be empowered to require national departments to justify, simplify or withdraw measures that undermine municipal functionality. 
• Finally, Parliament's role must be clarified by making it a legislative requirement to standardise local government impact assessments for all draft laws and regulations that impose duties on municipalities. The case for requiring impact assessments for legislation impacting local government finds support in section 151(4) of the Constitution, which instructs national and provincial governments not to compromise and impede municipalities. It is also supported by section 104 of the Constitution, which empowers Parliament to enact national law governing how regulations are made, tabled and approved. Currently, no such law exists. As a result, Parliament's role is limited to delegating the power to make regulations, most of which do not require approval or input from Parliament, only the act of tabling and noting. It is suggested that this needs to change, with Parliament being expressly empowered in a national law to scrutinise delegated legislation, particularly regulations that have a considerable impact on local government. The current Portfolio Committee and the Select Committee on Cooperative Governance can perform this function. Alternatively, Parliament could revive the Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation, which has not existed since 2014. There were calls to re-establish this committee as far back as 2016, both from within the government and from external sources. Creating such a committee would provide better oversight of regulations affecting local government, given that the Committee will oversee the regulations of all national departments. This point has also been argued by Dr Curtly Stevens in a doctoral thesis on overregulation of local government. 

Since local government reform is a long-term project that will outlast ministerial terms, the Draft White Paper rightly emphasises phased implementation. In this context, the call to embed Parliament is further supported, given that if delivery depends mainly on the executive, the reforms risk being derailed by interdepartmental rivalry and shifting priorities, as experienced before. It is thus argued that the Draft White Paper should more explicitly embed Parliament in the reform architecture, with a clear oversight and accountability role.

In conclusion, the Draft White Paper on Local Government is right to pursue system-wide reform, and the proposed national local government policy centre is a promising structural intervention. But structural fixes will only work if the institutions are designed with real authority and independence. That requires a clearinghouse designed with authority, data and independence. It also requires Parliament to be identified, empowered and utilised as a reform driver, not an afterthought. If the goal is a capable, responsive and developmental local government, then the reform policy must include the institution that writes the rules and holds the rule-makers to account.

By Curtly Stevens