It’s been quite some time that governments, the world over, have been trying to find the right place and role for local governments within their governance system and structures. Without throwing in the obvious about the old arguments and rationale for creating these institutions, I would just re-emphasize the held views on this matter. But to do so I just want to also reflect, just by way of mentioning the myriad of current challenges facing nations, especially our own, Botswana. I am doing so to try to locate the relevance of not just our local governments in their current structures, more importantly, to reflect on the type of local governments we need to have in place for appropriate response to these challenges in a manner that would provide leverage for productive engagement and visible empowerment for this country’s citizens.
Firstly, practitioners and theorists alike have argued for the importance of local governments as agents of local and national development, for reasons that they provide the closest, easiest and meaningful contact with citizens. They provide an environment within which democratic practices, such as participation, accountability, responsiveness, inclusiveness, consensus building, efficiency and effectiveness, rule of law and equity, among others, could flourish for the enrichment of good governance. Historically local governments have played this role to varying degrees in different countries owing to the type and extent of the decentralization processes that creates these local governments. In Botswana we have had a local government system that has been able to promote and enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of government’s outreach programmes for the general socio-economic and political development of the nation. The jury is out as to whether the structural arrangement of our local governments adequately provides enough for the realization of the above mentioned attributes of good governance. But what are current challenges facing the country that could require vibrant local governments’ initiatives?
This country has, over the years, put forward its broad and specific goals and objectives, as the blueprint of what needs to be done to guide the development process, through preparation and implementation of the National Development Plans. Amongst themes that have always directly or indirectly emerged as the country’s challenges were, and still are, poverty eradication, employment creation, economic diversification, food production and security and improved access to basic social, economic and infrastructural services. The realization of any of these to a significant degree will be a function of what role does government gives to local governments in the process. Currently government has adopted two major interventions that are to be pivotal in any efforts towards achieving our broad developmental goals. We have had our Vision 2016 and its stated pillars, which in themselves are challenges out of which we have drawn some objectives to be met.
Botswana has also embraced the Millennium Development Goals whose main focus resonates well with the Vision 2016 pillars. I am going to contend that any visible and measurable achievement on any of the above interventions pursuit is going to be to be partly and largely dependent upon the role of our local governments. Whilst our local governments are widely known to have performed relatively well in their roles of providing basic services and managing the resources well for developmental purposes, we still need a revamping of these institutions in so far as positioning them to be active and productive players in the attainment of both Vision 2016 pillars and the Millennium Development Goals. This process must necessarily include a marked decrease in their dependence on the central government for financial resources in particular, but that should not be limited only to financial devolution, it must be decentralization that shifts focus on responsibilities and/functions to deliberate provision of power and decisive authority on the local governments’ capacity to independently map the way forward towards achieving any of the two interventions’ desired goals. I am suggesting, by implication, that as currently structured and empowered, our local governments are not adequately positioned to maximize their potential contribution to the development process as pursued by government. Recall some current trends in centralizing some of the services that were for a long time the responsibility of local governments, and note that in my thinking that, and any other centralization moves will not be a positive intervention to better position local governments.
My contention therefore, is that we need our local governments to be given more powers and resources to match their expected contribution in assisting government to create a broad, positive and dynamic environment within which the country’s pursuits towards good governance can be up there with the best in the world. We cannot afford the docility and for me inadequately resourced and powerless local governments if we dream of attaining some of the milestones we have set for ourselves as a country. An existence of local governments with more devolved powers and functions and responsibilities commensurate with the extent of independence on resource allocation and utilization is a necessary precondition for any efforts towards meaningful and vibrant good governance practices. It is certainly not a choice for us to keep limiting our decentralization processes to performance of functions without powers entrenched on local governments. That scenario will only act to punch holes in not only our democratic practices but more broadly and importantly in our governance system.
To date we pride ourselves (or do we?) in a relatively long entrenched governance dispensation but it can only be well meaning and vibrant if good governance at the national level is well anchored on deep rooted and dynamic local governance as practiced and engineered by local governments. This is critical in any of our dreams to achieve a socio-economic, political and institutional development process that seeks to genuinely address the challenges of this century, particularly poverty alleviation (and not eradication at least if we are realists), access to basic services and resources for citizen empowerment and growth and all those embodiments of Vision 2016 and Millennium goals.
