LUNCEDO NJEZULA | Leading in the ‘never-normal’ landscape: why local government needs more than thick skin

There is an old South African joke that municipalities are expected to do everything except control the weather. Yet when it rains and the storm floods the roads, cuts electricity and uproots trees, residents often ask: “What is the municipality doing about the rain?” That question, amusing as it may be, captures one of the great paradoxes of local government. A municipality is at once a government, a business, a planner, a regulator, a developer, a community builder and an emergency responder.

It has to balance political mandates, legal obligations, financial constraints and citizen expectations, often all before breakfast. Picture, for a moment, the city manager or executive sitting down on a Monday morning. On the agenda: a power outage, a labour dispute, a court application, an unfunded infrastructure backlog, a councillor demanding urgent intervention, an auditor seeking evidence, and residents asking why potholes have not yet been repaired.

This is the “never-normal” environment of local government. One myth is that municipal success depends only on technical competence. Of course, engineering, finance and governance matter.