Just four and a half years since it launched, the Anglo American Municipal Capability and Partnership Programme (MCPP) is seeing results in its quest to strengthen municipalities in the areas where the company operates, with the focus on getting the basics right.
With over R150 million invested in the programme so far, the MCPP was born as a vehicle for collaboration and to work with other stakeholders such as industry, business, municipalities and NGOs to improve the state of service delivery and to plan and prepare for the post-mining future.
South Africa’s challenges around governance, logistics and transport, water, electricity and wastewater treatment as well as access to quality housing, education, health and job opportunities are common in mining communities, but interventions are often not implemented in a sustainable way.
The programme is anchored in the broader Collaborative Regional Development (CRD) initiative, a partnership model pioneered by the company and designed to foster sustainable economic and social development, and contributing towards improving delivery of basic services across the company’s operating regions.
MCPP works with teams in participating municipalities to address critical problems and collaborate on finding and sharing best practices and solutions that address challenges experienced within local government programmes. These include aspects such as spatial development planning, local economic development, water services and asset management. The programme’s footprint is within Anglo American’s host communities in Limpopo, North West and the Northern Cape.
One of the successes of the programme has seen so far in Limpopo’s Fetakgomo Tubatse municipality, where a partnership to produce both food and income security has benefitted 886 of the area’s most vulnerable youth, women and disabled people. At the start of the initiative, half of the participants had not planted anything before.
For the Mogalakwena municipality in Limpopo, repairs to infrastructure have prevented water wastage, which has seen a reduction on non-revenue water from 70% in 2021 to 62% in 2024. The water leaks repair initiative has seen 158 leaks fixed out of the 230 that have been identified so far, which has resulted in reduction of water losses from 57% in 2022 to 51% in 2024.
One of the challenges in Limpopo’s Blouberg municipality was the inability to complete capital projects. With the MCPP working very closely with the project management unit, and supporting with in-service coaching and technical support, the municipality has been enabled to complete capital projects on time, and within budget. This resulted in the municipality receiving an additional R10 million grant for the 2023/2024 financial year.
In Gamagara, a municipality based in the Northern Cape, collaboration with the water team has seen good progress in addressing the challenge of water and waste-water operations and maintenance. In 2020, only about 40% of water reticulation assets were mapped, and there was no data on operations and maintenance (O&M), which made development of O&M plans difficult. By 2023, 80% of reticulation assets had been mapped, and work to develop O&M plans are now underway. This is critical to ensure proper maintenance of infrastructure, which is critical for communities and the town economy,
“These are just some of the highlights of the programme so far,” says Musa Jack, Anglo American Programme Manager for the MCPP. “There is so much that we can share about our journey and progress so far, which we hope will motivate both the government and other private sector players to partner in this way. We have seen first-hand how much impact this kind of collaboration can have – together we can tackle the developmental challenges our municipalities face and improve the entire ecosystem.”
Jack explains that the MCPP has seen that there is value in starting small, working together, and keeping interventions sustainable. “Development is not only about catalytic projects, but also an ongoing commitment that requires change in behaviour and alignment of investments,” she notes. “The idea of co-creation and collaboration is at the heart of this approach – we must work side by side with municipalities and strengthen them, enabling them to deliver optimally to the citizens they serve.”
Successfully functioning local government structures are in everyone’s interest, she adds, pointing out that the challenges South Africa’s municipalities face can only be overcome through willingness of all parties to collaborate and partner. Through programmes like the MCPP, business and civil society can play a direct, visible and measurable role with government in finding solutions to the service delivery challenges that have become part and parcel of life in many parts of South Africa.
“These challenges are complex, and will take time to resolve,” she says, “but with a collaborative approach – where we all play our part as active citizens – we are confident that solutions can be found.”
“The Anglo American MCPP is in line with the call for private sector to partner with government in addressing the challenges of local government and from SALGA we have a deep appreciation for the contribution that Anglo American is making through the MCPP, to improve service delivery for our communities,” says Mr Nkosinathi Mthethwa, Portfolio Head at the South African Local Government Association (SALGA).
