South Africa’s local government crisis has reached the point where change is not just needed; it has become unquestionably necessary.
Citizens cannot keep paying more for municipalities that deliver less. They cannot build their lives around water tankers, exploding substations, sewage spills and roads that are falling apart. For millions of people, municipal failure now determines the daily routine. Will there be water before school? Will the electricity stay on long enough to run the business? Will the refuse be collected? Will the sewage flowing down the street ever be attended to?
These are basic services for which residents already pay. Providing them is the purpose of local government. Yet in too many failing municipalities, even the temporary restoration of a service is presented as an achievement.
These are basic services for which residents already pay. Providing them is the purpose of local government. Yet in too many failing municipalities, even the temporary restoration of a service is presented as an achievement.
The ANC bears responsibility for this collapse. Years of cadre deployment, corruption and mismanagement have wrecked the ability of local government to deliver. Cadre deployment has purged technical skills and replaced them with unqualified party loyalists. Tenderpreneurship has seen maintenance budgets diverted to the politically connected and allowed political interests to interfere with administration.
The biggest crisis in local government is that public money is used to sustain patronage networks while services collapse. The consequences accumulate. A maintenance budget cut today becomes a burst pipe tomorrow. An unfilled engineering position becomes a substation that blows up. A badly managed contract becomes a road that must be repaired again, at further expense to the public.
Eventually, a municipality spends its time responding to emergencies it should have prevented. Residents pay their accounts, then pay again for water storage, backup electricity and repairs to vehicles damaged by potholes. Businesses lose trading hours. Investment moves out. Jobs that communities desperately need never come, as no investor puts money into collapse. Municipal collapse makes people poorer.
Now, as the ANC itself fragments, voters have an opportunity to replace the system that produced Now, as the ANC itself fragments, voters have an opportunity to replace the system that producedthis failure. Its declining support opens the possibility of change in many places where change once seemed beyond reach.
But the ANC losing support does not automatically mean residents get better government. As the ANC splits, its decline has produced fragmented councils in which positions are traded and the same failed leadership returns through another coalition arrangement. A different mayor’s name on the office door means little if the same political interests still control what happens inside. An ANC that loses its majority can retain power by assembling enough smaller parties around it. Those parties campaign against its failures.
After the election, however, their handful of seats can become bargaining chips for mayoral positions, executive portfolios and influence over municipal decisions. The residents who voted for change are left with another deal. Johannesburg showed how far this bargaining can go when Al Jama-ah, with just three seats in a 270 seat council, supplied two successive mayors despite getting just over 9 000 votes in 2021. Political office became something to distribute among partners, while residents continued to endure the deterioration of their city.
The problem is the conduct of those who govern. Cooperation between parties must produce accountability, stability and delivery. When it instead protects failed leadership and access to patronage, residents have every reason to reject it. The problem is the conduct of those who govern. Cooperation between parties must produce accountability, stability and delivery. When it instead protects failed leadership and access to patronage, residents have every reason to reject it. Coalitions of corruption allow the machinery of municipal failure to survive an election.
The constant chopping and changing of mayors and rearrangement of positions means responsibility breaks down. The people at the centre of the arrangement remain in power while everybody blames somebody else. That is the choice facing voters: allow the decline of the ANC to become another cycle of chaos and coalitions of corruption, or turn it into a mandate for delivery.
In the Auditor-General’s 2023/24 municipal audit results, only 41 municipalities nationally achieved clean audits. Twenty were in the Western Cape. Financial discipline matters because every rand lost to mismanagement is a rand unavailable for services. Reliable infrastructure requires budgets that can be funded, procurement that can withstand scrutiny and officials who are accountable for their work. There is evidence of the service outcomes too.
The Department of Water and Sanitation’s 2023 Blue Drop assessment awarded Cape Town’s water system 98.1% and George Water Works 95.2%. These results demonstrate what capable administration can achieve in an essential municipal function.
A failing municipality needs leadership that will confront corruption, rebuild technical capacity, collect revenue fairly and direct resources towards maintaining and improving infrastructure. It needs a government able to sustain that work beyond the next monthly council meeting and not be trapped in an endless cycle of motions of no confidence.
Voters who want change do have the power to make it happen. But that power is weakened when it is scattered among parties whose seats become bargaining chips after the election. It becomes decisive when united behind the only party with the strength to govern and a record against which it can be held accountable. The opportunity for change is real. But for that change to deliver results, voters need to choose to stop the chaos and start delivery.