party the right to nominate premiers, the executives at the provincial level.
34
This right
was coupled with section 100 of the Constitution, which held that the President could
appoint an administrator in cases of provincial mismanagement, to give Mbeki virtual
control over the appointment and dismissal of premiers. He soon extended this direct
control not only over premiers, but also over the hiring and firing of specific provincial
ministers (MECs), according to several papers.
35
With this sort of authority over the
ANC’s elected officials in the provinces, the president has the ability to reward those
loyal to the central government, and to punish those who take contrary stands; this
reinforces top-down governance in the country as a whole.
36
Current politics and outlook: South Africa
Several important lessons emerge from South Africa. First are causal issues. The power
of the president within the ANC government was directly responsible for reversing
certain aspects of decentralization. Yet without a generalized, national crisis, even a
powerful president was unable to reduce provincial revenue autonomy. Second is an
issue of measurement: not all decentralization processes transfer power, even in cases
where fiscal (revenue) transfers are generous. Third, enhancements in state capacity to
monitor subnational spending reduced subnational autonomy on the expenditure side.
Politics in contemporary South Africa are dominated by the ANC, and more
specifically by the ANC national leadership. Provinces have relatively little autonomy
from the center, despite the equitable share revenue guarantees created at the transition
from apartheid. Revenue transfers were never accompanied by shifts in tax authority,
and autonomy over spending and borrowing was always limited. The localized crises in
several of the provinces gave the government the incentive to crack down on provincial
spending, but not to recentralize equitable revenue. Given the government’s electoral
dominance, it commands an easy majority in parliament; the fact is that the ANC needs to
be more concerned about internal splits than external opposition. The need to pay more
attention to the rank-and-file than to electoral opposition ensures that the provinces are
not unduly punished by the center; rather, they are ever more closely watched.
South Africa demonstrates why revenue and expenditure decentralization figures
are insufficient to comment on the distribution of power. Cursory glances at revenue
figures would suggest that South Africa’s provinces are treated generously. But the
elaboration of national performance standards, the centralized nature of bargaining over
wages, the inability of the provincial governments to transfer resources across budget
items, and reductions in bargaining power are more revealing. Each of these is partly
attributable to the electoral dominance and top-down structures of party management
within the ANC, which combine to dramatically limit the creation of a decentralized
system of intergovernmental relations.
34
See the reports of the Helen Suzman Foundation on Mbeki’s right to appoint premiers.
http://www.hsf.org.za/focus27/focus27gumedeANC.html
,
http://www.hsf.org.za/focus_16/f16Tough_top.html
35
The most recent incident is a debate over whether Mbeki instructed the premier of the Eastern
Cape to dismiss three top officials.
http://www.sabcnews.com/politics/the_parties/0,1009,47906,00.html
(November 22, 2002)
36
Interview, Theo Bekker.
18
18
Convention