THENEWSOUTHAFRICA
A lower tier comprised elected local government institutions. Their
main responsibilities were health and sanitation services, public trans-
portation, and local roads. But in most cases the municipal councils, too,
lacked managerial capacity and 3:nadequate revenue base. By 1998, 7 I
percent of consumers regularly paid their taxes and services charges, in-
cluding electricity, but the rest did not, and the debt to municipalities
mounted to nearly ten million rand. 30 In the cities, the previously segre-
gated local governments were gradually integrated into large metropoli-
tan units run by elected councils. In African rural areas-the
former
Homelands-local
government was a hybrid, because chiefs {"traditional
authorities"} were empowered to apply customary law subject" to the
terms of the constitution. Attempts were made to meld the chiefs into the
municipality system, but many rural Africans still honored customary law,
which subordinated women to men and gave chiefs control of the alloca-
tion of tribal land. However, educated, urbanized Africans questioned
how long the traditional authorities should survive.U
Truth and Reconciliation
As the first president of the new South Africa, Nelson Mandela made it
his highest priority to lay the foundations