Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) Minister, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, has welcomed the signing into law of the Local Government: Municipal Systems Amendment Act, 2022.
This comes after President Ramaphosa signed the act into law on Friday.
The Act is part of a suite of legislation meant to ensure effective and efficient functioning municipalities, and a professional local public administration.
The Ministry in a statement said the Amendment Bill, with corresponding provisions as the invalidated Act, was reintroduced to Parliament on 6 February 2019 in terms of the Joint Rules of Parliament.
“The Bill repeals the Amendment Act and has been properly tagged as a section 76 Bill to address the procedural defect referred to above. The Bill was approved by Parliament on 3 May 2022 with further amendments following comprehensive public participation processes at both national and provincial levels.
“The Local Government: Municipal Systems Amendment Act, 2022 (Act No.3 of 2022) was assented to by the President on 16 August 2022,” said CoGTA spokesperson, Lungi Mtshali.
In addition, the Act disallows municipal officials from holding political office.
The amendments provide for procedures and competency criteria for the appointment of municipal managers and other senior managers and the consequences of appointments made in contravention of the Act.
The amendments, reads the statement, further provides timeframes within which performance agreements of municipal managers and managers directly accountable to municipal managers must be concluded.
The Act also makes further provisions for evaluating the performance of municipal managers and managers directly accountable to municipal managers.
“Employment contracts and performance agreements of municipal managers and managers directly accountable to municipal managers are now also required to be consistent with the Act and any regulations made by the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs,” he said.
Mtshali said the Minister is now able to prescribe frameworks to regulate human resource management systems for local government and mandates for organised local government. Furthermore, the Act extends the Minister’s powers to make regulations relating to municipal staff matters.
Dlamini Zuma urged all stakeholders to support municipalities and ensure that the Act is implemented fully.