Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Mmamoloko Kubayi has raised concern over the “obscene legal costs” paid by municipalities, which affects the ability to deliver services to communities.
The Minister delivered a keynote address at the opening of the 6th National Municipal Legal Practitioners’ Forum (NMLPF), hosted by the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), in Cape Town.
Kubayi acknowledged that municipalities are facing skills shortages in key areas, including financial management and supply chain management, leading to governance failures and wasteful expenditure - leaving municipalities vulnerable to corruption and wasteful expenditure
“Governance failures at local government manifest directly in declining service delivery, including water interruptions, power outages, sewer blockages, waste management breakdowns, and deteriorating road networks.
“These failures have become a source of litigation against municipalities, which leads to an increase in litigation budgets at municipalities. The lack of skills, which also affects the legal capacity of municipalities, poses a serious challenge in that municipalities are unable to respond adequately to these litigations with limited inhouse capacity,” she noted.
The domino effect of these failures eventually leads to municipalities having to “largely rely on external legal expertise”.
Kubayi noted that the one area that “has been a source of obscene legal costs" is on employer/employee dispute resolution”.
"Clear arbitration awards are ignored. Instead of complying, municipalities stall and force employees to launch enforcement and contempt proceedings. Disciplinary processes become high-risk legal battles, with municipalities outsourcing the entire process to external lawyers. What should really be an internal process becomes an expensive and time-consuming legal exercise.
“This is just but one area of litigation that municipalities have been poorly managing but it serves to demonstrate that we need to strengthen ethical leadership, compliance and service delivery excellence.
“The process of strengthening begins with the capacitation of municipalities with adequate skills. With effective in-house legal skills, the ability to monitor and manage litigations will enable legal teams to be able to withstand internal political pressure when it pushes toward litigation that may not serve the municipality’s long-term interests.
“With the right skills, municipalities will be able to develop litigation strategies that are cost effective and in the interest of the municipality,” Kubayi stated.
She reminded legal practitioners of their duty, under the code of conduct of the Legal Practice Council, to provide unbiased advice and avoid generating unnecessary work.
“Legal practitioners within State organs have to be held accountable to this the LPC code of ethics. As limited as the instruments of enforcement may be, we must still sharpen the instruments for accountability on matters of unethical conduct.
“As part of strengthening litigation management, we must find a way of clearly defining wasteful legal spending in State organs, wherein we are able to assess if people are pursuing high-cost cases with poor prospects, litigating against well-established legal precedent, persisting after multiple adverse rulings and rejecting reasonable settlement offers that offer practical solutions,” Kubayi said.
Furthermore, successfully strengthening of State legal capacity must be done in tandem with addressing the “lack of strong internal legal capacity to critically assess risks, weigh costs, and identify alternative solutions”.
“Let’s utilise the Intergovernmental National Litigation Forum to enhance collaboration and consistency in managing State litigation. I am pleased to hear that SALGA will participate in the upcoming Intergovernmental National Litigation Forum that is set for 24 March 2026.
“I believe that working together, we can make State litigation capacity more effective and in time, we will start to reduce State litigation contingent liability,” Kubayi said. – SAnews.gov.za
