Zamikhaya Maseti
The debate about building an ethical, capable and developmental state in South Africa cannot be confined to government, political leadership and senior public administrators. It must necessarily include organised labour.
Trade unions are not external observers of the state; their members constitute a significant part of the human machinery through which the state performs its functions. This is particularly important at local government level, where citizens experience the state most directly through water, sanitation, electricity, refuse removal, roads, planning and other basic municipal services.
Organised labour therefore occupies a strategic position from which it can contribute towards rebuilding institutional capability, strengthening ethical administration and restoring public confidence in municipalities.
The constitutional foundation for this responsibility is clear.
Section 195 of the Constitution requires public administration to maintain a high standard of professional ethics, promote the efficient, economic and effective use of resources, remain development-oriented, respond to people's needs and maintain accountability and transparency. These principles apply throughout the public administration, including municipalities.
Consequently, the capable state cannot simply be understood as a state that employs sufficient numbers of people. It must be a state populated by competent, ethical and professional public servants who understand that public employment ultimately exists to serve citizens.
The urgency of this task is demonstrated by the condition of local government. The Auditor-General's latest consolidated report for 2024–25 records that only 39 of South Africa's 257 municipalities achieved clean audits. Eighty-seven received qualified opinions, five adverse opinions and eight disclaimers, while two audits remained outstanding.
These outcomes cannot be attributed to one actor alone. They point towards broader weaknesses involving leadership, administration, financial controls, institutional capability and accountability. The Auditor-General has consequently emphasised professionalisation, stronger institutional capacity, ethical behaviour and consequence management as essential ingredients for improving municipal government.
It is within this context that organised labour must understand its role as extending beyond traditional bread-and-butter questions of wages and conditions of employment. These remain legitimate and indispensable functions of trade unions.
However, defending workers and defending functioning public institutions should not be treated as contradictory objectives. A financially dysfunctional municipality, administratively hollowed out and incapable of delivering services, ultimately threatens both communities and municipal workers themselves.
Organised labour should therefore become a champion of the professionalisation of local government. Trade unions have an important interest in ensuring that recruitment, promotion and appointment processes are based on competence, qualifications, experience and fairness. They should oppose arbitrary political interference in administrative appointments just as firmly as they oppose unfair labour practices.
Municipal administrations cannot become repositories of political patronage, nor should employment become disconnected from the skills required to perform public functions. A capable municipality requires engineers, planners, accountants, artisans, technicians and administrators possessing the appropriate competencies, supported by continuous professional development.
This requires organised labour to defend professionalism even when doing so is uncomfortable. Ethical trade unionism cannot mean defending every employee irrespective of conduct.
Workers are entitled to procedural fairness, representation and protection against victimisation, but these rights should not become instruments for shielding corruption, chronic non-performance, fraud or abuse of public resources. There is an important distinction between defending a worker's rights and defending wrongdoing. A credible labour movement must be capable of making that distinction.
Organised labour can equally function as an important internal accountability mechanism. Municipal workers often encounter maladministration, procurement irregularities, political interference and waste long before these matters reach councils, auditors or investigative institutions.
Shop stewards and organised labour structures can therefore help create environments in which workers can report wrongdoing without intimidation or occupational victimisation. Strengthening ethical cultures inside municipalities requires employees to know that refusing an unlawful instruction will not destroy their careers and that exposing corruption will not leave them institutionally isolated.
Collective bargaining institutions provide an established platform through which this broader developmental partnership can occur. The South African Local Government Bargaining Council brings together SALGA as the employer organisation and SAMWU and IMATU as organised labour.
Its functions extend across collective bargaining, dispute resolution and matters affecting municipal services, while bargaining occurs at central, divisional and municipal levels, including through Local Labour Forums.
These institutions should increasingly become spaces for discussing professionalisation, productivity, workplace ethics, skills development and institutional performance alongside remuneration and conditions of employment.
A capable state also requires investment in its workforce. Organised labour should insist that municipalities establish credible programmes for training, apprenticeships, mentoring and continuous professional development. Skills development should not become another compliance exercise measured by workshops attended rather than competencies acquired. Experienced municipal workers possess enormous institutional knowledge.
Properly harnessed, that knowledge can be transferred to younger employees and graduates entering local government, gradually rebuilding technical capacity within municipalities and reducing excessive dependence on external consultants. Strengthening internal municipal capacity is also an explicit objective of current initiatives involving the Auditor-General and cooperative governance institutions.
There is, however, an equally important obligation on employers. Government cannot demand professionalism from workers while tolerating unstable leadership, unlawful appointments, delayed disciplinary processes, unsafe working environments or political interference.
Ethical government requires reciprocity. Municipalities must respect collective agreements, labour legislation and workers' rights while unions must recognise that rights coexist with obligations to the public.
Ultimately, organised labour must locate itself within the broader struggle for a developmental state. The worker repairing a water pipe, maintaining an electricity network, processing an indigent household application or collecting refuse is not performing an abstract administrative function. That worker is giving practical expression to the constitutional promise of democratic government.
The future of local government therefore requires a renewed social compact between workers, organised labour, municipal administrations, political leadership and communities. Such a compact must reject the false choice between protecting workers and building an efficient state. South Africa needs both.
Organised labour can be a powerful custodian of this compact by defending workers against exploitation while defending public institutions against corruption, incompetence and institutional decay.
The ethical and capable state will ultimately not be constructed through legislation and organisational structures alone. It will be built through the daily conduct of the people who inhabit its institutions.
Organised labour, representing those workers collectively, therefore carries not merely an industrial responsibility but a profound democratic and developmental responsibility: to help ensure that local government works, that public resources serve their intended purpose, and that the state remains worthy of the trust of the people it exists to serve.
* Maseti is a political economy analyst.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Media Group.