5 September 2007

By Nangamso Mabindla

GOOD governance was under the spotlight when Buffalo City and its Swedish twin, the city of Gälve, met recently.

The meeting, which was held in Sweden, was attended by a delegation led by Executive Mayor Zintle Peter and municipal manager Gaster Sharpley. The two cities meet twice a year.

Speaking about the meeting, the City's communications manager, Darby Gounden, said that it was emphasised that good governance was important for municipalities to achieve their goals.

"Good governance was discussed at length during the meeting. We [spoke about] how we looked at good governance in the context of Buffalo City. We focused on various areas and characteristics of good governance."

Gounden said it was discovered that for a municipality to achieve its goals it needed to promote participatory democracy, to be consensus orientated, accountable, transparent and efficient and effective. Responsiveness was among other important principles.

"With these in mind we decided to come up with a comprehensive good governance strategy for both cities."

Good governance was not the only thing topic the agenda in Sweden - the two cities also looked at the progress of various projects and finalised the close out of the partnership with the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida).

"We have had a very successful partnership with Sida and we have had lots of successful projects with the agency. We will always be thankful to them for ensuring that we deliver services to the people," Gounden said.

Some of the city's Sida-funded projects included the setting up of community support centres, housing, disaster management and geographic information systems.

However, Swedish aid was not lost to the city, as the municipality had entered into a partnership with the Swedish Association of Local Authorities International Development Agency (Salaida).

"While in Sweden, we made a new application to Salaida on projects that we want to work on as a municipality. We will know by October if we are successful with our applications."

The cities will meet again in Buffalo City in January 2008.

Source: buffalocity.gov.za