The leadership appears to have no political compass and to have lost its way.
The management seems to be on its own without proper political supervision. The city”;s finances are said to be in shambles.
Service delivery is compromised.
Coalition politics is not working.
Politics is no longer a vocation based on serving the public good but rather appears to be a stepping stone to money and privilege.
Windhoek is not alone in this untenable situation. Many other municipalities find themselves in a similar state.
What should be done to restore integrity and meaning to the leadership of our local authorities? We must first try to understand the root causes of this state of affairs in our local authorities.
INFLUENCES
One key reason our local authorities are not delivering services is the way local authority leaders are elected – on parties”; or organisations”; lists.
A party or organisation identifies its candidates and compiles a list of identified candidates for the electoral commission.
These lists can be influenced by many factors such as loyalty to party or organisation “;barons”;, jobs for comrades, financial inducement, and similar nonleadership factors.
Many councils are headed by people with no experience, let alone the requisite competencies, and lack political maturity, political integrity or ethical leadership qualities.
Too many of them are not loyal to the electorate but rather to their organisations or party bosses.
They are not interested in serving the public but in getting close to the trough to satisfy their material needs. Many are driven by crass materialism.
PUBLIC SERVICE
Political leadership is supposed to be about public service without necessarily expecting a reward.
Political leadership is, first and foremost, about promoting the public good and of providing service to the community.
How do we return to the ethos of political leadership as a vocation of serving the people? We should start by looking at the way we elect our local authority political leaders.
The current system of party or organisation lists disempowers the electorate. Political leaders are disconnected from the voters.
Voters cast their ballots for parties or organisations. As a result, there is no political accountability to the people whose interests they are supposed to represent.
Those elected in this fashion are more loyal to their parties or organisations than to the electorate.
If we want these leaders to be directly connected to the voters, they should be elected as individuals at ward level through their parties or organisations.
This will help pave the way for democratic accountability.
Democratic accountability helps to ensure that elected public representatives will be directly accountable to the electorate rather than to their parties or organisations.
In this way, the electoral system will help restore integrity and accountability among political leaders at city, town and community levels.
It is imperative that elected public officials at these levels should genuinely represent the interests of their communities.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
It is time for Namibia to revisit the electoral system at local authority level. The current arrangement is not serving our communities well at all.
Local authorities should be divided into wards. Candidates seeking election should live in a particular ward and be elected from such a ward.
Voters should be given the opportunity to determine which candidate has the interests of voters at heart, has the necessary competencies to serve their needs, and is in constant touch with the voters.At the local level, democratic accountability helps to ensure that democracy is truly a permanent experiment in selfgovernment.
