Build One South Africa (BOSA) leader Mmusi Maimane has reiterated his call for the country to make changes to the electoral system.
Maimane wants the public to directly elect public office bearers to enhance accountability in the country.
He says the reliance on political parties to choose public representatives leads to corruption, delays in service delivery and a lack of accountability.
He was speaking at a dialogue in East London, aimed at addressing issues related to service delivery.
The National Community Dialogue is a platform that seeks to deal with issues which hinder the delivery of basic services, with an aim to hold public representatives accountable for the problems.
Participants of the dialogue have criticised the local government sphere for failing to deliver basic services such as water and proper access roads.
Chairperson of the dialogue Leonard Ncumbese, says, “As a service delivery initiative, looking at all issues affecting service delivery, your water, your roads hospital services, we are demanding accountability from politicians and officials.”
According to Maimane the electoral system favours politicians, something which could be fixed by the restoration of a constituency-based system.
“What we have to do is restore a constituency-based system that even if a person is from a political party, they know their first point is to serve the people, that ultimately the people can vote for them. Even in Local Government, people must directly vote for the mayor, so that he is chosen directly, so the mayor knows he is directly accountable to the people,” he says.
Chairperson of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Songezo Zibi says they will soon conduct oversight in municipalities across the country.
“Working with the Auditor General and the Special Investigating Unit in our oversight program over the next five years, we have, in fact, started taking briefings from the Auditor General on municipalities. One of those will be Buffalo City, incidentally. The plan is we interact with those municipalities several times a year and conduct oversight to ensure that the monies are used well,” says Zibi.
Communities have been encouraged to conduct dialogues of this nature, in efforts to address issues related to service delivery.
