Johannesburg — ON MONDAY September 18, Richard Dyantyi, the Western Cape MEC for local government and housing, sent a letter to Helen Zille, the executive mayor of Cape Town, making clear that he intends to change the executive mayoral system in the City of Cape Town to an executive committee (exco) system. Essentially, the move would serve to strip the Democratic Alliance's (DA's) Zille of her wide-ranging executive powers.

Legal arguments aside, there are some very concrete reasons for not intervening. Such an intervention would represent hypocrisy on the part of the African National Congress (ANC), which defended the functionality of the system in Cape Town when it fell under the party's control, and has applied the structure to other major cities, including Johannesburg and Tshwane. But more important, perhaps, a reversion to the exco system would undermine the city council's decision to proceed with an executive mayoral system and could therefore be construed as an abuse of power by provincial government.

Equally, there is a particular irony in the fact that the DA lobbied for years to have the executive mayoral system in Cape Town changed to an exco system, and in fact undertook to support exco systems in its local government manifesto.

But given the implications of the debate, the MEC needs to rise above the local Cape Town tug of war, and become an objective source of support and guidance in the spirit of co-operative governance. Insiders argue that, until now, he has managed to play this role successfully -- fostering a positive working relationship between the provincial and local spheres, notwithstanding different political affiliations.

While the constitution and various pieces of local government legislation make provision for the intervention of provincial government in local government, the spirit of the legislation makes it clear that intervention should apply only in the case of a serious breakdown in a municipality's ability to carry out

its functions. For a provincial government to use such legislation

to cause a change in political control would set a serious precedent in South African politics, especially if the basis appears to be little more than an attempt by a political party in one sphere to shift power in its favour in another sphere. At heart, the move could be seen to undermine the most basic tenet of postapartheid local government: its constitutionally enshrined independence.

Furthermore, there are valid reasons why the ANC should accept the loss of Cape Town in the last local elections, and rather than turning to legal wrangling should consolidate a response to voters' concerns. A survey of expenditure in SA's top cities by the authors, for instance, demonstrates that per capita spending by Cape Town dropped significantly from 2003 onwards, against a steady increase in per capita spending by other large metros such as Johannesburg, Tshwane or Ethekwini. Damagingly, in the last year the ANC was in power in Cape Town (2004-05), the city was able to spend only 63% of its capital budget and the council was afflicted by a number of tender and contract scandals. This anomalous delivery trend for otherwise improving city management in our biggest cities, suggests that voters may well have decided that inadequate service delivery and fraught management

in Cape Town did not deserve electoral endorsement.

To force a change that would enable the ANC to retake Cape Town through the back door will not endear the ANC to voters and, apart from giving the DA the sympathy vote, it is also likely that voters will resent having another ANC-dominated council forced on them, causing a backlash against the ANC and further shrinking support for the party in Cape Town in the long term.

Besides, the last time the DA ran Cape Town (from late 2000-2002), ending with the Peter Marais fiasco and the collapse of the DA-New National Party alliance, the party learned that running a large South African city was not as easy as it looked from the opposition benches. The ANC may be better advised to bide their time and regather themselves. The nature of politics and party divisions in council could see them back in power, legitimately, sooner than they think.

But for the time being, it is up to Cape Town to change its structure of governance and, to date, the various factions in Cape Town's council have decided to stay with the executive mayoral system.

However unpalatable to the ANC, democracy must run its course.

 Allan is a local government analyst and specialist consultant and was a special adviser to the provincial and local government minister. Heese is an independent economist.