Johannesburg – President Cyril Ramaphosa has once again reminded the country’s local government sphere of how important it is in attracting the much-talked about investors to the country and their various localities.
Ramaphosa says while investors first consider the investment climate in the country, they tend to move to the municipality where the company is going to be located is key.
The president stressed this point on Wednesday while addressing the second day of the annual local government summit held in Joburg.
The summit is held, among other things, to review the wall-to-wall system of local government system almost 22 years after it was first implemented to ensure that every inch of the country is covered by a municipality.
“I think it is important that we have it clear in our minds that the investments we mobilize finally take place at the local level.
“And it is therefore at the local level all of you who are here, are the real actors, you are real enablers for those businesses that come and invest in our country.
“If we are to harness the momentum of economic recovery that these new investments signal or these expansion investments signal, local government has to be strong, it has to be efficient, it has to be capable and it also has to be well run.
“When these domestic investors, as well as multi-nationals, make their investment decisions on where to bring or to expand their investments, one of the factors that they consider is whether there is an enabling environment in that locality,” Ramaphosa told the summit.
While addressing the summit, Ramaphosa was left embarrassed when the venue near the OR Tambo international airport was plunged into darkness due to load shedding.
“I am sorry about that… hehehe… I am sorry… I was being given lessons on how to deal with load shedding. And I must say that I am sorry about that.
“I must say that this continues to be our biggest challenge as we all know and I think it affects you at local level because you distribute electricity and when it does this, it gets your won customers to lose businesses.
“It disrupts the livelihood of our people and… people lose confidence in us,” he said after the embarrassing incident, while he was laughing and then carried on with his speech.
When Ramaphosa finished his speech, the floor was open to delegates to pose questions and make suggestions.
Zamo Nxumalo, the mayor of Harry Gwala district municipality in southern KwaZulu-Natal, told Ramaphosa that the proposed funding model for municipalities should be speeded up.
He said while there have been constant calls for municipalities to get their house in order in matters pertaining to their finances, Nxumalo said municipalities do not have the financial muscle to attract and retain the much sought-after skills of chartered accountants.
He said at most municipalities offer salaries of R800 000 per annum to chartered accountants and that was not enough to woo them to come and work for the local government sphere where they are needed the most