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When we think about local government elections, we often think about parties, candidates, and who will control a council.
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But what happens after the votes are counted?
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Who keeps the water running, the streets maintained, and the lights on?
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And what can a new council actually change when the problems it inherits have been building for years?
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I'm Tisneem Esop, and this is Just Access, The Real Democracy, a podcast from Parry, the Public Affairs Research Institute.
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In the weeks leading up to South Africa's local government elections, we'll examine the promises parties are making through Parry's research on municipal government, land, water and energy, state capacity and public participation.
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We'll also hear from younger voices about their experiences of local government.
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After the election, we'll return to the councils and coalitions that emerge and what happens next.
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This first episode asks, what is really at stake?
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The 2024 national election changed South Africa's political landscape, but coalition politics is already a reality in many municipalities.
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At the same time, many residents are living with unreliable services and struggling to make their concerns heard.
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What should voters expect from the people they elect?
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How much of a municipality's performance depends on political leadership and how much depends on its administration, its finances, and decisions that are made elsewhere.
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We begin with Paris Executive Director, Dr.
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Stembile Mbete, and ask her why this local government election matters beyond the question of which party wins.
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Well, I think that what's most important about this election, I mean, firstly, it's the first local government election that we have after the 2024 national and provincial elections, where the ANC got below 50%, you know, got around 40% in the election.
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And so it's the first election after the ANC's loss of a national majority.
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In parliament, it's the first election after the formation of the GNU, which is the governing coalition that's currently governing the country at a national level.
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I think that what's also significant about this election is that it is an election that comes at a time when a large majority of municipalities in the country are in very serious crisis in terms of administration and service delivery, and that we are seeing a very acute crisis of administration and delivery in the city of Johannesburg, which is the biggest municipality in the country, as the richest municipality in the country, and in many ways is a bellwether for the well-being of the whole of South Africa and indeed the region in many ways, because it is the economic hub uh of South Africa and Southern Africa.
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And so, because of that, it feels as though the stakes in this election are particularly high and uh that the outcomes of the election are really going to set the tone, set the foundation for the future of not just South Africa, but I think the region as a whole.
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So, what you're saying about this being the first election after the GNU is uh very interesting to me because uh the coalition politics really started in the municipalities before it went to uh national government.
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And I think in many ways the municipalities set the tone for our conversation about municipal governance.
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So I wonder now that there's a GNU, how you think that's going to impact what happens in the election, where we're expecting a lot of coalitions, especially in the major metropolitan municipality.
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So I think the point that you're making about a coalition government starting really at local level is a really important one.
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I think it's one that we don't sort of think about enough as we contextualize coalitions even nationally.
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You know, the research that Mr.
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Mapangoube Institute has done shows that in 2016, the first election where we had a big uptick of hung municipalities and they have all coalition governments, there were 27 hung municipalities after the 2016 election, there were 70 after the 2021 election.
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And we expect that that number is going to be even larger in 2026.
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And so what we've seen is that as political support in the country has fractured, uh, so no single party commanding the support of over 50% of the population in large parts of the country, and as there's been a fracturing of opposition politics that comes with hung municipalities and therefore coalition governments.
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But because as a country, we tend to have quite a hierarchical view of politics, right?
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So, you know, national government at the top and province, you know, in the middle, and then local government at the bottom, even though the constitution isn't designed that way.
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It's meant to be, you know, governance by spheres of equal, um, you know, separate but equal, you can't really say that.
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But no, but it's meant to be three spheres of equal importance uh that are important in different areas, you know, of delivery and of governance.
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But we tend to think of them as hierarchical.
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And so local government coalitions and things were really allowed to be a bit of a basket case and kind of neglected because it's local politics, it's not that important.
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So I think the national coalition that came into being in 2024 has put a spotlight on coalition politics and a spotlight on the importance and the seriousness of knowing how to manage coalitions, that I think was a bit more of a neglected conversation at local level.
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I think there's been also an expectation, and there certainly was after 2024, that the coalition agreement at national level would somehow cascade downwards to province and then to local government.
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And we saw that that didn't happen, in fact.
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That in many cases, the places where it was expected that certainly the grand coalition between the ANC and the DA would carry at a local level, at a provincial level in a place like Kauting and then at local level in different municipalities didn't carry.
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And so there isn't a carrying through an alignment of what coalition has agreed at national level to lower levels, and there's a much greater sense of differentiation than one would have expected.
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But I think that overall, watching national leaders of parties needing to grapple with getting coalitioning right has been an important thing to refocus parties on what it actually takes to make local coalitions function better.
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And I think that what it's also done is that it's shifted to some extent the attention of the electorate towards, and I think we still have a little way to go with this, seeing coalitions not as an aberration or something that is an exception to the rule, but actually as the consequence or the outcome of electoral choices.
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And if coalitions are the outcome of electoral choices, and in some places, like the city of Johannesburg, like the city of Chanay, like the city of Ekaruleni, the likely outcome of electoral choices, then we need to start dealing with them as the reality of our situation and not as something that we can wish away.
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And I think that there's been so much of our political discourse until now has treated coalitions as something that can be wished away.
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And it's not.
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It's the consequence of what happens when we vote if we don't all vote for a single party or a particular dominant party.
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And so, how do we then learn to live with the coalitions and to manage them in a way that doesn't undermine delivery and governance?
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Sure, and it's a consequence of the way in which our political system is set up.
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Our electoral system is set up, yes.
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It's not something that's going away.
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In fact, we're going to probably settle into a kind of coalition pattern for quite some time.
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And I hear that is something that the electorate has to understand when exercising political choice.
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So from Parry's perspective and work on local government and electoral politics, what are the central problems facing local government in this election?
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I mean, you can choose political leadership, administrative capability, municipal financing, public trust.
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Are there ways in which these all interact, or what would you put as the kind of central problems facing local government as we head into this election?
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I think all of these things interact at different levels.
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And, you know, leading from the coalition's conversation that we've just had, the political administrative interface, so the way in which political leadership influences or affects the administration of municipalities is, I think, a big area of research for Paris.
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And, you know, in many ways, that was one of the reasons we were founded, was to really understand uh the relationship between the politics and the administration of the state in general.
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And I think that local government is the sphere at which we are seeing how dysfunctional relations between politics and administration can lead to worsening delivery and development outcomes for residents of municipalities in general.
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And so some of the things that are really interesting is about firstly, how do we insulate as much as possible the administration of municipalities from political change?
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Because what we've seen, and I think Kate is going to talk about this, about the work on public participation, is that the amount of churn in local governments of, you know, which mayors in charge and speakers and all of that has a real impact on the administration of the municipalities, on whether, you know, streets are cleaned and robots are fixed and street lights are on and water services are maintained, is really at the mercy in many places of whatever the political dynamics and the political churn is.
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And so needing to find a constructive way to manage the relationship between the politics that governs municipalities and the administration that runs them and that's supposed to do the delivery is a question of appointment, so making sure that we have proper processes of appointment of senior managers in municipalities, so that those processes aren't, for lack of a better word, captured by political interests.
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Um, making sure that we've got proper processes of appointment of boards, so in a place like Johannesburg that's run through different municipal entities, making sure that the people that are appointed to the boards and then the boards that appoint the CEOs and the processes of appointment are professional, are insulated from political dynamics and are transparent and open to citizens to be able to see.
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Those institutions also have to work within financial limits.
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Jugal Mahabir is a research associate at Paris whose work includes local government finances.
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In a separate conversation, we asked him what sits behind a municipality's ability to deliver and how voters can judge promises about services and affordability.
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Not only in diagnosing the problem but in finding solutions.
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Something that I think people need to understand more is that municipalities, particularly for electricity and water, they are part of a value chain and they are the last point of the value chain.
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And we tend not to think of the inefficiencies of ESCOM.
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We don't think a lot about the inefficiencies of water boards who can pass on these inefficiencies to municipalities.
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The bulk increases for water and electricity has been above inflation.
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As soon as something is above inflation, it would have an effect on consumers.
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It would have an effect on how consumers consume different types of goods and affordability, particularly to your lower income groups.
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And I think over the past 10 to 15 years, and some of the analysis we've done at Paris is to find that electricity prices, for example, at least the bulk that municipalities pay has increased by 900% versus inflation increasing by 150%.
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Now, municipalities are unlike ESCOM and waterboards, which are kind of treated like what we would call economic entities.
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A municipality is a political entity also.
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So they would need to balance the increase in costs with affordability, because they have that social responsibility to ensure that services are affordable.
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Now, if you look at the nature of the water and especially the electricity industry, there has been large increases in costs and because of that an impact on affordability.
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Now, those are what we call a structural issue.
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And it's a reality of municipalities because municipalities, via the constitution, so they essentially have the ability to apply taxes.
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The main tax is the property rates, but the constitution also gives them what's called the ability to apply a surcharge on the tariffs.
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Now, a surcharge is essentially a tax that you generate from a trading service over and above the tariff that you can use for your municipal general services.
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So they're not specifically related to the electricity industry or the water industry, but just for general services.
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But municipalities tend not to have this surcharge.
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What they tend to do is run surpluses on the trading services.
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So, you know, the revenues minus the expenditures, whatever's left over, they tend to use for quite a few different things, which is not best practice, which is why there's a need to ring fence these things.
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But the thing is, is that 10 years ago, 15 years ago, electricity was a huge surplus-generating industry.
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And municipalities depended a lot on it to fund general services in addition to property rates.
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Now, if there's a squeeze on your expenditure side, then those surpluses will shrink over time, which is what's leading to a lot of structural financial issues.
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But with that said, municipalities' debt management and credit control is very poor.
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One of the main issues is that there's this revenue management value chain that has various components that need to be working well.
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And if one component doesn't work, then the entire thing just collapses.
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So for example, if your tariffs don't make sense, people won't pay for it.
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If your tariffs are unaffordable to a certain group of customers, they won't be able to pay for it.
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If you are budgeting incorrectly, expecting to collect more than what you can, you know, it'll affect your ability to collect revenue.
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If you have databases that are poor, if you're charging people that can't pay for services, that are indigent.
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I've heard instances of people that are deceased being charged for services.
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You know, if you don't have your databases correct, everything that happens subsequently will collapse.
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So it's the fundamental problem is a combination of structural issues that are impacting on municipalities and also very serious performance issues in that the revenue management systems and value chain is weak at various components, which then ultimately impacts on people's ability to pay and even the willingness to pay.
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And then the last point is there's also a complex relationship between the quality of services that you receive and your willingness to pay for a service.
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So if you're not receiving the services that you desire, or it's not up to your standards, you're unwilling to pay for the service, or you tend to want to, which is a good thing, by the way, to hold your municipality more to account for the money they're taking from you.
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And it's these two issues, external and internal, having a huge squeeze on finances.
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And I mean, I don't need to go into the 400 billion debt owed, the 150 owed to Eskim and Waterboards.
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These are the you know tangible impacts of this very complex financial problem that these municipalities face.
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You would have to, as a citizen, firstly understand the powers and functions that municipalities have and what they can control and what they can't control.
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I think we have a very complex system which municipalities tend to form part of.
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I'll give you an example of some of the.
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So if you look at our roads, our roads is what you could consider a concurrent function.
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Certain ones are done by nationals, certain ones are done by provinces, and certain ones are done by municipalities.
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I think the general norm, if it's an N, it's a national, if it's an R, it's a provincial, and if it's an M, it's a municipal road.
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That's usually how it operates in general.
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And the thing is, sometimes you have issues on a provincial road that citizens will hold a municipality to account.
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And then, like I mentioned with electricity and water, yes, municipalities give you the final service, but there's an entire value chain before that that you know citizens don't really see or is not very visible to the layperson.
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And I think for a citizen, it does become important to understand, you know, what's within a municipality's mandate.
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So, you know, a political party promising or speaking about social grants has literally nothing to do with a municipality.
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What a political party should be speaking about is greater support for free basic services, for example, you know, in terms of the quantum, in terms of appropriately identifying indigenous households, you know, in a more efficient and effective way so that people that need support for basic services are getting those services.
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So it's about understanding then as a citizen the complexities of our systems and where exactly a municipality does have the ability to change things.
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You know, like for example, I saw some manifesto speaking about affordable electricity, affordable water.
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Now, that should ultimately be the goal of the municipality, but it's going to be very difficult to achieve if you don't deal with the issues on the upper parts of the supply chain.
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I mean, if affordable electricity becomes complex if Eskom increases its tariffs, for example.
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You know, so I think promises need to be taken in context.
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And not to say, you know, some political parties aren't thinking about this, you know, and trying to find alternative ways to decrease the costs of this.
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But just to point out that it is complex.
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So when you are assessing such promises, you need to be quite, you know, critical of the solution as opposed to simply saying, I'm gonna make this affordable.
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But how much can you make it affordable by, I think becomes important.
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Juggal's account gives us a way to test a promise.
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Does it recognize what a municipality controls, what it can afford, and what it would take to deliver?
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Back to my conversation with Stembile, we were joined by Kate Tissington, whose work at Paris focuses on public participation.
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We turned to the party manifestos to ask how residents can assess both the proposed solutions and the parties offering them.
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Okay, so moving to the election and the manifesto.
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So parties are releasing their manifestos now as they do before an election.
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Some of them are yet to be released.
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But of the ones that we have already, and I'm gonna ask this to both of you what are the different ideas of local government that the parties are offering?
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Perhaps what are the differences of approach there?
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And then I'll start with Ste and then Kate, when I come to you, if you could answer that question in relation to what the different parties offer in terms of residents and their ability to shape the priorities of municipalities and hold them accountable.
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So I'll I'll start with you, Sta on the party manifestos.
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So an interesting feature I think that is coming out or differentiator between different parties in the manifestos is around how to deal with the crisis of delivery and the extent to which you have uh private sector involvement in dealing with delivery, so in providing particularly water and electricity services.
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And you know, you can almost bucket the parties.
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So, you know, the EFF has a very strong focus on insourcing, on trying to build up uh internal capacity for those things.
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The DA has uh spoken quite a lot more about increasing private sector involvement in the delivery of services and public private partnerships in electricity provision, water provision, even in safety, you know, in trying to address crime.
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The ACDP has quite a lot uh in its manifesto around those things.
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The ANC is a lot more kind of in the middle about you know, creating.
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Investment-ready municipalities, making an investment case, you know, from municipalities and having some involvement of the private sector, but really keeping the overall responsibility for delivery within the municipality and within the government.
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You're seeing a lot around fixing the administration of municipalities, so everything from skills to appointments of making sure that you've got the right people in the right places in the municipalities to be able to really improve the capacity of the municipalities to deliver on what they're supposed to do.
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And different parties have different views on how that can be done.
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And so, you know, you've got the DA's standard view on CADA deployment, you've got the EFF saying that, well, you need to deal with this by building internal capacity, by in-sourcing a lot of the things instead of contracting out.
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And you have the ANC with a whole plan around filling management posts and doing professionalization.
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I think that is tied to the professionalization framework that's been uh introduced at national level.
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And you have, you know, a lot of emphasis from different parties around needing to employ, you know, skilled, ethical, accountable people in administrations and different parties, you know, all identifying the same problem but blaming it on different things.
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So seeing the problem as a seeing different sources for the problem, but saying that all of them promising to have ethical, accountable, you know, well-skilled uh government running different municipalities.
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You've got a big emphasis on the role of municipalities in achieving economic growth and development and dealing with local economies, that different parties, according to their ideological views, seeing, you know, what the role of your municipality is in that respect differently.
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So, for example, the EFF places a much greater emphasis on the role of the municipality itself is an employment creator, you know, a DA and ACDP.
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But to some degree, an ANC and even some of the smaller parties like Obosa see the municipality as the enabler of economic activity, so needing to get the basics right in order to create an environment that is conducive to business to operate, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises.
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And so this idea that and we've seen it, I think, from the business sector growing the Bussa, BLSA, a view or a spotlight on municipalities as the operating environment for the economy, the operating environment for businesses.
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And we've seen in a municipality like Disobusla, for example, in the Northwest, where Clover left the municipality, Clover, which was a big revenue source for the municipality, but eventually said, look, we can't operate here because the roads infrastructure is not conducive to our trucks to ship out, you know, the things that we produce here.
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Uh, the roads infrastructure doesn't work, the provision of water, provision of electricity means that we can't keep on as a going concern as a business here.
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And so they moved and they moved to another municipality, I think, in KZN.
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And so uh you're seeing these questions of the link between uh municipalities and economic development across party manifestos.
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What's different, I think, is kind of who is blamed for when things don't work and what the solutions are for all of these things.
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Yeah, I mean it's interesting.
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A lot of parties haven't seen in their manifestos explicit mention of you know what they're going to be doing to involve communities and shaping priorities and in planning.
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I mean, you do see it.
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I think there's a focus because of the many crises in municipalities, there's a focus more on stabilizing finances and on sort of you know technical governance issues, which is obviously important.
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Um, but I think it's interesting because, you know, having to make the case for why community participation and involvement and engagement is so important, often that's sort of asked of those who are interested in it.
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But I think it's something that we need to be sort of flipping the script on.
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And I there's some parties have been very explicit around it, except that's often where the parties where you've seen that the sort of track record hasn't been great.
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But it's encouraging to see, I think, a focus on it.
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You just hope that I think it's something that is genuinely going to be taken seriously going forward.
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But yeah, I think it's a mixed bag.
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I think some of the parties really are focusing sort of on the financial, administrative, technical side of things.
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Um, and that's fine.
00:26:51.039 --> 00:27:08.319
But you know, when it comes to sort of dignity, and there are parties that are focusing their sort of campaign around the dignity of people in municipalities, and I think that's important, and that should not be something that's neglected, purely, you know, focusing on a managerial approach as a solution to the problems.
00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:22.799
I think you do need to be thinking around how to involve citizens because that's where you actually are going to see, I think, accountability happening and responsiveness happening if you are really involving citizens and communities properly in the work of the municipality.
00:27:22.960 --> 00:27:24.480
So yeah, it's a mixed bag.
00:27:24.559 --> 00:27:27.200
It doesn't seem to be something that's a massive focus, though.
00:27:27.440 --> 00:27:29.839
But yeah, I mean, I think we will see.
00:27:30.640 --> 00:27:43.920
I think that's such an interesting point to underline is that this is local government sort of the center of public participation, yet the political party manifestos largely don't speak to it.
00:27:44.000 --> 00:27:50.480
And I think that's such an important point to just sit with, you know, that's a a massive thing that's missing.
00:27:50.880 --> 00:28:07.440
So, Kate, staying with you, when a party makes a big promise on water, on electricity, on roads, housing, and so on, what is the question that we should be asking about municipal authority, funding, delivery, and public accountability?
00:28:07.839 --> 00:28:14.640
Yeah, I mean, I think it does depend on whether the party has held power before and how it's delivered on these promises.
00:28:14.799 --> 00:28:20.000
Um, I think, yeah, looking at a track record of a party's ability to actually deliver is important.
00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:21.920
I mean, what have we seen in the past?
00:28:22.079 --> 00:28:24.160
Are they being honest now about the failures?
00:28:24.319 --> 00:28:36.480
I think that's what we're seeing, which is a bit unsettling around parties not really admitting to the failures of the past and trying to sort of, you know, you see often you're hearing often our parties saying, just give us 50 plus one and we'll do it.
00:28:36.559 --> 00:28:38.000
And it's like, okay.
00:28:38.160 --> 00:28:42.000
Um, you know, like don't put us into a coalition because that's been the problem.
00:28:42.079 --> 00:28:44.559
But we know, like Stay said, that's the reality now.
00:28:44.799 --> 00:28:54.319
So I think seeing um whether they're actually engaging honestly in what hasn't worked, and are they also talking around details about how they're going to do things differently?
00:28:54.480 --> 00:29:02.000
And then, you know, for parties that haven't been in power as well, are they also being um are they looking at these problems differently?
00:29:02.240 --> 00:29:08.319
Are they talking differently around the solutions, or are they just sort of saying the same rhetoric that we've heard before?
00:29:08.559 --> 00:29:13.200
And I think it's important to be thinking across all of those different issues.
00:29:13.359 --> 00:29:19.440
I think delivery capacity and public accountability, let's be honest around what is possible and not possible.
00:29:19.680 --> 00:29:27.920
Some of what I'm hearing just doesn't give me a sense that people are being truly honest around what can actually be done or not.
00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:31.359
And it's sort of the same old promises, and I think people are tired of that.
00:29:31.599 --> 00:29:35.759
Obviously, it's difficult to be honest around what can happen and what can't happen.
00:29:35.920 --> 00:29:38.640
But that's what people are asking for in communities.
00:29:38.799 --> 00:29:41.599
Like, you know, let's be honest about what's going to happen and not happen.
00:29:41.839 --> 00:29:54.000
We will understand and be reasonable if you're giving us proper information and the kinds of solutions where we feel like actually this is possible, not just sort of pie in the sky stuff that we're used to.
00:30:07.759 --> 00:30:14.079
In this episode, we've heard why a local government election is about more than a change of political leadership.
00:30:14.319 --> 00:30:27.599
Councils make consequential choices, but the services residents rely on also depend on the municipal and administrative staff, working systems, available money, and decisions beyond the municipality itself.
00:30:27.920 --> 00:30:32.000
Those pressures do not excuse a party from explaining its promises.
00:30:32.240 --> 00:30:35.200
They make the explanation more necessary.
00:30:35.440 --> 00:30:38.480
What problem is the party trying to solve?
00:30:38.799 --> 00:30:42.160
Is its proposed solution within a municipality's power?
00:30:42.400 --> 00:30:43.599
How would it pay for it?
00:30:43.759 --> 00:30:48.960
And what can residents learn from its record or from the way it responds to them now?
00:30:49.680 --> 00:30:52.960
There may be different answers in different municipalities.
00:30:53.200 --> 00:30:59.359
Across this series, we'll take a closer look at those questions through the issues that shape people's lives.
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Next time, we turn to land.
00:31:01.680 --> 00:31:03.599
Who makes decisions about its use?
00:31:03.759 --> 00:31:05.359
Whose rights are recognized?
00:31:05.440 --> 00:31:08.960
And what can local government do about access to it?
00:31:09.200 --> 00:31:17.599
I'm Tisneem Esop, and you've been listening to Just Access, The Real Democracy, a podcast from Parry, the Public Affairs Research Institute.
00:31:17.759 --> 00:31:21.599
To learn more about Parry and its research, visit parry.org.za.
00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:28.480
Follow or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and please share this episode with others and keep listening.
00:00:10.560 --> 00:00:18.239
When we think about local government elections, we often think about parties, candidates, and who will control a council.
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But what happens after the votes are counted?
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Who keeps the water running, the streets maintained, and the lights on?
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And what can a new council actually change when the problems it inherits have been building for years?
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I'm Tisneem Esop, and this is Just Access, The Real Democracy, a podcast from Parry, the Public Affairs Research Institute.
00:00:39.679 --> 00:00:52.479
In the weeks leading up to South Africa's local government elections, we'll examine the promises parties are making through Parry's research on municipal government, land, water and energy, state capacity and public participation.
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We'll also hear from younger voices about their experiences of local government.
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After the election, we'll return to the councils and coalitions that emerge and what happens next.
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This first episode asks, what is really at stake?
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The 2024 national election changed South Africa's political landscape, but coalition politics is already a reality in many municipalities.
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At the same time, many residents are living with unreliable services and struggling to make their concerns heard.
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What should voters expect from the people they elect?
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How much of a municipality's performance depends on political leadership and how much depends on its administration, its finances, and decisions that are made elsewhere.
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We begin with Paris Executive Director, Dr.
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Stembile Mbete, and ask her why this local government election matters beyond the question of which party wins.
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Well, I think that what's most important about this election, I mean, firstly, it's the first local government election that we have after the 2024 national and provincial elections, where the ANC got below 50%, you know, got around 40% in the election.
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And so it's the first election after the ANC's loss of a national majority.
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In parliament, it's the first election after the formation of the GNU, which is the governing coalition that's currently governing the country at a national level.
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I think that what's also significant about this election is that it is an election that comes at a time when a large majority of municipalities in the country are in very serious crisis in terms of administration and service delivery, and that we are seeing a very acute crisis of administration and delivery in the city of Johannesburg, which is the biggest municipality in the country, as the richest municipality in the country, and in many ways is a bellwether for the well-being of the whole of South Africa and indeed the region in many ways, because it is the economic hub uh of South Africa and Southern Africa.
00:03:01.280 --> 00:03:17.439
And so, because of that, it feels as though the stakes in this election are particularly high and uh that the outcomes of the election are really going to set the tone, set the foundation for the future of not just South Africa, but I think the region as a whole.
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So, what you're saying about this being the first election after the GNU is uh very interesting to me because uh the coalition politics really started in the municipalities before it went to uh national government.
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And I think in many ways the municipalities set the tone for our conversation about municipal governance.
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So I wonder now that there's a GNU, how you think that's going to impact what happens in the election, where we're expecting a lot of coalitions, especially in the major metropolitan municipality.
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So I think the point that you're making about a coalition government starting really at local level is a really important one.
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I think it's one that we don't sort of think about enough as we contextualize coalitions even nationally.
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You know, the research that Mr.
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Mapangoube Institute has done shows that in 2016, the first election where we had a big uptick of hung municipalities and they have all coalition governments, there were 27 hung municipalities after the 2016 election, there were 70 after the 2021 election.
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And we expect that that number is going to be even larger in 2026.
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And so what we've seen is that as political support in the country has fractured, uh, so no single party commanding the support of over 50% of the population in large parts of the country, and as there's been a fracturing of opposition politics that comes with hung municipalities and therefore coalition governments.
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But because as a country, we tend to have quite a hierarchical view of politics, right?
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So, you know, national government at the top and province, you know, in the middle, and then local government at the bottom, even though the constitution isn't designed that way.
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It's meant to be, you know, governance by spheres of equal, um, you know, separate but equal, you can't really say that.
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But no, but it's meant to be three spheres of equal importance uh that are important in different areas, you know, of delivery and of governance.
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But we tend to think of them as hierarchical.
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And so local government coalitions and things were really allowed to be a bit of a basket case and kind of neglected because it's local politics, it's not that important.
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So I think the national coalition that came into being in 2024 has put a spotlight on coalition politics and a spotlight on the importance and the seriousness of knowing how to manage coalitions, that I think was a bit more of a neglected conversation at local level.
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I think there's been also an expectation, and there certainly was after 2024, that the coalition agreement at national level would somehow cascade downwards to province and then to local government.
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And we saw that that didn't happen, in fact.
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That in many cases, the places where it was expected that certainly the grand coalition between the ANC and the DA would carry at a local level, at a provincial level in a place like Kauting and then at local level in different municipalities didn't carry.
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And so there isn't a carrying through an alignment of what coalition has agreed at national level to lower levels, and there's a much greater sense of differentiation than one would have expected.
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But I think that overall, watching national leaders of parties needing to grapple with getting coalitioning right has been an important thing to refocus parties on what it actually takes to make local coalitions function better.
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And I think that what it's also done is that it's shifted to some extent the attention of the electorate towards, and I think we still have a little way to go with this, seeing coalitions not as an aberration or something that is an exception to the rule, but actually as the consequence or the outcome of electoral choices.
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And if coalitions are the outcome of electoral choices, and in some places, like the city of Johannesburg, like the city of Chanay, like the city of Ekaruleni, the likely outcome of electoral choices, then we need to start dealing with them as the reality of our situation and not as something that we can wish away.
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And I think that there's been so much of our political discourse until now has treated coalitions as something that can be wished away.
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And it's not.
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It's the consequence of what happens when we vote if we don't all vote for a single party or a particular dominant party.
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And so, how do we then learn to live with the coalitions and to manage them in a way that doesn't undermine delivery and governance?
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Sure, and it's a consequence of the way in which our political system is set up.
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Our electoral system is set up, yes.
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It's not something that's going away.
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In fact, we're going to probably settle into a kind of coalition pattern for quite some time.
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And I hear that is something that the electorate has to understand when exercising political choice.
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So from Parry's perspective and work on local government and electoral politics, what are the central problems facing local government in this election?
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I mean, you can choose political leadership, administrative capability, municipal financing, public trust.
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Are there ways in which these all interact, or what would you put as the kind of central problems facing local government as we head into this election?
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I think all of these things interact at different levels.
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And, you know, leading from the coalition's conversation that we've just had, the political administrative interface, so the way in which political leadership influences or affects the administration of municipalities is, I think, a big area of research for Paris.
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And, you know, in many ways, that was one of the reasons we were founded, was to really understand uh the relationship between the politics and the administration of the state in general.
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And I think that local government is the sphere at which we are seeing how dysfunctional relations between politics and administration can lead to worsening delivery and development outcomes for residents of municipalities in general.
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And so some of the things that are really interesting is about firstly, how do we insulate as much as possible the administration of municipalities from political change?
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Because what we've seen, and I think Kate is going to talk about this, about the work on public participation, is that the amount of churn in local governments of, you know, which mayors in charge and speakers and all of that has a real impact on the administration of the municipalities, on whether, you know, streets are cleaned and robots are fixed and street lights are on and water services are maintained, is really at the mercy in many places of whatever the political dynamics and the political churn is.
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And so needing to find a constructive way to manage the relationship between the politics that governs municipalities and the administration that runs them and that's supposed to do the delivery is a question of appointment, so making sure that we have proper processes of appointment of senior managers in municipalities, so that those processes aren't, for lack of a better word, captured by political interests.
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Um, making sure that we've got proper processes of appointment of boards, so in a place like Johannesburg that's run through different municipal entities, making sure that the people that are appointed to the boards and then the boards that appoint the CEOs and the processes of appointment are professional, are insulated from political dynamics and are transparent and open to citizens to be able to see.
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Those institutions also have to work within financial limits.
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Jugal Mahabir is a research associate at Paris whose work includes local government finances.
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In a separate conversation, we asked him what sits behind a municipality's ability to deliver and how voters can judge promises about services and affordability.
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Not only in diagnosing the problem but in finding solutions.
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Something that I think people need to understand more is that municipalities, particularly for electricity and water, they are part of a value chain and they are the last point of the value chain.
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And we tend not to think of the inefficiencies of ESCOM.
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We don't think a lot about the inefficiencies of water boards who can pass on these inefficiencies to municipalities.
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The bulk increases for water and electricity has been above inflation.
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As soon as something is above inflation, it would have an effect on consumers.
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It would have an effect on how consumers consume different types of goods and affordability, particularly to your lower income groups.
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And I think over the past 10 to 15 years, and some of the analysis we've done at Paris is to find that electricity prices, for example, at least the bulk that municipalities pay has increased by 900% versus inflation increasing by 150%.
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Now, municipalities are unlike ESCOM and waterboards, which are kind of treated like what we would call economic entities.
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A municipality is a political entity also.
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So they would need to balance the increase in costs with affordability, because they have that social responsibility to ensure that services are affordable.
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Now, if you look at the nature of the water and especially the electricity industry, there has been large increases in costs and because of that an impact on affordability.
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Now, those are what we call a structural issue.
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And it's a reality of municipalities because municipalities, via the constitution, so they essentially have the ability to apply taxes.
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The main tax is the property rates, but the constitution also gives them what's called the ability to apply a surcharge on the tariffs.
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Now, a surcharge is essentially a tax that you generate from a trading service over and above the tariff that you can use for your municipal general services.
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So they're not specifically related to the electricity industry or the water industry, but just for general services.
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But municipalities tend not to have this surcharge.
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What they tend to do is run surpluses on the trading services.
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So, you know, the revenues minus the expenditures, whatever's left over, they tend to use for quite a few different things, which is not best practice, which is why there's a need to ring fence these things.
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But the thing is, is that 10 years ago, 15 years ago, electricity was a huge surplus-generating industry.
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And municipalities depended a lot on it to fund general services in addition to property rates.
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Now, if there's a squeeze on your expenditure side, then those surpluses will shrink over time, which is what's leading to a lot of structural financial issues.
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But with that said, municipalities' debt management and credit control is very poor.
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One of the main issues is that there's this revenue management value chain that has various components that need to be working well.
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And if one component doesn't work, then the entire thing just collapses.
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So for example, if your tariffs don't make sense, people won't pay for it.
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If your tariffs are unaffordable to a certain group of customers, they won't be able to pay for it.
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If you are budgeting incorrectly, expecting to collect more than what you can, you know, it'll affect your ability to collect revenue.
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If you have databases that are poor, if you're charging people that can't pay for services, that are indigent.
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I've heard instances of people that are deceased being charged for services.
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You know, if you don't have your databases correct, everything that happens subsequently will collapse.
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So it's the fundamental problem is a combination of structural issues that are impacting on municipalities and also very serious performance issues in that the revenue management systems and value chain is weak at various components, which then ultimately impacts on people's ability to pay and even the willingness to pay.
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And then the last point is there's also a complex relationship between the quality of services that you receive and your willingness to pay for a service.
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So if you're not receiving the services that you desire, or it's not up to your standards, you're unwilling to pay for the service, or you tend to want to, which is a good thing, by the way, to hold your municipality more to account for the money they're taking from you.
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And it's these two issues, external and internal, having a huge squeeze on finances.
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And I mean, I don't need to go into the 400 billion debt owed, the 150 owed to Eskim and Waterboards.
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These are the you know tangible impacts of this very complex financial problem that these municipalities face.
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You would have to, as a citizen, firstly understand the powers and functions that municipalities have and what they can control and what they can't control.
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I think we have a very complex system which municipalities tend to form part of.
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I'll give you an example of some of the.
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So if you look at our roads, our roads is what you could consider a concurrent function.
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Certain ones are done by nationals, certain ones are done by provinces, and certain ones are done by municipalities.
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I think the general norm, if it's an N, it's a national, if it's an R, it's a provincial, and if it's an M, it's a municipal road.
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That's usually how it operates in general.
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And the thing is, sometimes you have issues on a provincial road that citizens will hold a municipality to account.
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And then, like I mentioned with electricity and water, yes, municipalities give you the final service, but there's an entire value chain before that that you know citizens don't really see or is not very visible to the layperson.
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And I think for a citizen, it does become important to understand, you know, what's within a municipality's mandate.
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So, you know, a political party promising or speaking about social grants has literally nothing to do with a municipality.
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What a political party should be speaking about is greater support for free basic services, for example, you know, in terms of the quantum, in terms of appropriately identifying indigenous households, you know, in a more efficient and effective way so that people that need support for basic services are getting those services.
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So it's about understanding then as a citizen the complexities of our systems and where exactly a municipality does have the ability to change things.
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You know, like for example, I saw some manifesto speaking about affordable electricity, affordable water.
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Now, that should ultimately be the goal of the municipality, but it's going to be very difficult to achieve if you don't deal with the issues on the upper parts of the supply chain.
00:19:07.359 --> 00:19:13.599
I mean, if affordable electricity becomes complex if Eskom increases its tariffs, for example.
00:19:13.759 --> 00:19:17.839
You know, so I think promises need to be taken in context.
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And not to say, you know, some political parties aren't thinking about this, you know, and trying to find alternative ways to decrease the costs of this.
00:19:26.720 --> 00:19:28.559
But just to point out that it is complex.
00:19:28.640 --> 00:19:37.359
So when you are assessing such promises, you need to be quite, you know, critical of the solution as opposed to simply saying, I'm gonna make this affordable.
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But how much can you make it affordable by, I think becomes important.
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Juggal's account gives us a way to test a promise.
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Does it recognize what a municipality controls, what it can afford, and what it would take to deliver?
00:19:56.319 --> 00:20:03.759
Back to my conversation with Stembile, we were joined by Kate Tissington, whose work at Paris focuses on public participation.
00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:12.480
We turned to the party manifestos to ask how residents can assess both the proposed solutions and the parties offering them.
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Okay, so moving to the election and the manifesto.
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So parties are releasing their manifestos now as they do before an election.
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Some of them are yet to be released.
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But of the ones that we have already, and I'm gonna ask this to both of you what are the different ideas of local government that the parties are offering?
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Perhaps what are the differences of approach there?
00:20:40.400 --> 00:20:56.240
And then I'll start with Ste and then Kate, when I come to you, if you could answer that question in relation to what the different parties offer in terms of residents and their ability to shape the priorities of municipalities and hold them accountable.
00:20:56.400 --> 00:20:59.119
So I'll I'll start with you, Sta on the party manifestos.
00:20:59.680 --> 00:21:22.880
So an interesting feature I think that is coming out or differentiator between different parties in the manifestos is around how to deal with the crisis of delivery and the extent to which you have uh private sector involvement in dealing with delivery, so in providing particularly water and electricity services.
00:21:23.200 --> 00:21:26.079
And you know, you can almost bucket the parties.
00:21:26.640 --> 00:21:33.839
So, you know, the EFF has a very strong focus on insourcing, on trying to build up uh internal capacity for those things.
00:21:34.000 --> 00:21:50.160
The DA has uh spoken quite a lot more about increasing private sector involvement in the delivery of services and public private partnerships in electricity provision, water provision, even in safety, you know, in trying to address crime.
00:21:50.319 --> 00:21:55.200
The ACDP has quite a lot uh in its manifesto around those things.
00:21:55.359 --> 00:21:59.759
The ANC is a lot more kind of in the middle about you know, creating.
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:16.559
Investment-ready municipalities, making an investment case, you know, from municipalities and having some involvement of the private sector, but really keeping the overall responsibility for delivery within the municipality and within the government.
00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:37.200
You're seeing a lot around fixing the administration of municipalities, so everything from skills to appointments of making sure that you've got the right people in the right places in the municipalities to be able to really improve the capacity of the municipalities to deliver on what they're supposed to do.
00:22:37.279 --> 00:22:40.960
And different parties have different views on how that can be done.
00:22:41.119 --> 00:22:53.680
And so, you know, you've got the DA's standard view on CADA deployment, you've got the EFF saying that, well, you need to deal with this by building internal capacity, by in-sourcing a lot of the things instead of contracting out.
00:22:54.000 --> 00:23:00.559
And you have the ANC with a whole plan around filling management posts and doing professionalization.
00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:06.799
I think that is tied to the professionalization framework that's been uh introduced at national level.
00:23:07.119 --> 00:23:23.519
And you have, you know, a lot of emphasis from different parties around needing to employ, you know, skilled, ethical, accountable people in administrations and different parties, you know, all identifying the same problem but blaming it on different things.
00:23:23.759 --> 00:23:37.920
So seeing the problem as a seeing different sources for the problem, but saying that all of them promising to have ethical, accountable, you know, well-skilled uh government running different municipalities.
00:23:38.079 --> 00:23:57.279
You've got a big emphasis on the role of municipalities in achieving economic growth and development and dealing with local economies, that different parties, according to their ideological views, seeing, you know, what the role of your municipality is in that respect differently.
00:23:57.519 --> 00:24:08.240
So, for example, the EFF places a much greater emphasis on the role of the municipality itself is an employment creator, you know, a DA and ACDP.
00:24:08.319 --> 00:24:28.000
But to some degree, an ANC and even some of the smaller parties like Obosa see the municipality as the enabler of economic activity, so needing to get the basics right in order to create an environment that is conducive to business to operate, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises.
00:24:28.240 --> 00:24:47.359
And so this idea that and we've seen it, I think, from the business sector growing the Bussa, BLSA, a view or a spotlight on municipalities as the operating environment for the economy, the operating environment for businesses.
00:24:47.599 --> 00:25:08.160
And we've seen in a municipality like Disobusla, for example, in the Northwest, where Clover left the municipality, Clover, which was a big revenue source for the municipality, but eventually said, look, we can't operate here because the roads infrastructure is not conducive to our trucks to ship out, you know, the things that we produce here.
00:25:08.240 --> 00:25:17.200
Uh, the roads infrastructure doesn't work, the provision of water, provision of electricity means that we can't keep on as a going concern as a business here.
00:25:17.279 --> 00:25:20.799
And so they moved and they moved to another municipality, I think, in KZN.
00:25:21.039 --> 00:25:30.480
And so uh you're seeing these questions of the link between uh municipalities and economic development across party manifestos.
00:25:30.799 --> 00:25:38.400
What's different, I think, is kind of who is blamed for when things don't work and what the solutions are for all of these things.
00:25:39.920 --> 00:25:41.279
Yeah, I mean it's interesting.
00:25:41.359 --> 00:25:51.599
A lot of parties haven't seen in their manifestos explicit mention of you know what they're going to be doing to involve communities and shaping priorities and in planning.
00:25:51.839 --> 00:25:53.039
I mean, you do see it.
00:25:53.200 --> 00:26:06.240
I think there's a focus because of the many crises in municipalities, there's a focus more on stabilizing finances and on sort of you know technical governance issues, which is obviously important.
00:26:06.559 --> 00:26:19.440
Um, but I think it's interesting because, you know, having to make the case for why community participation and involvement and engagement is so important, often that's sort of asked of those who are interested in it.
00:26:19.599 --> 00:26:23.119
But I think it's something that we need to be sort of flipping the script on.
00:26:23.200 --> 00:26:31.839
And I there's some parties have been very explicit around it, except that's often where the parties where you've seen that the sort of track record hasn't been great.
00:26:32.079 --> 00:26:35.519
But it's encouraging to see, I think, a focus on it.
00:26:35.759 --> 00:26:41.519
You just hope that I think it's something that is genuinely going to be taken seriously going forward.
00:26:41.759 --> 00:26:44.000
But yeah, I think it's a mixed bag.
00:26:44.079 --> 00:26:49.680
I think some of the parties really are focusing sort of on the financial, administrative, technical side of things.
00:26:49.759 --> 00:26:50.880
Um, and that's fine.
00:26:51.039 --> 00:27:08.319
But you know, when it comes to sort of dignity, and there are parties that are focusing their sort of campaign around the dignity of people in municipalities, and I think that's important, and that should not be something that's neglected, purely, you know, focusing on a managerial approach as a solution to the problems.
00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:22.799
I think you do need to be thinking around how to involve citizens because that's where you actually are going to see, I think, accountability happening and responsiveness happening if you are really involving citizens and communities properly in the work of the municipality.
00:27:22.960 --> 00:27:24.480
So yeah, it's a mixed bag.
00:27:24.559 --> 00:27:27.200
It doesn't seem to be something that's a massive focus, though.
00:27:27.440 --> 00:27:29.839
But yeah, I mean, I think we will see.
00:27:30.640 --> 00:27:43.920
I think that's such an interesting point to underline is that this is local government sort of the center of public participation, yet the political party manifestos largely don't speak to it.
00:27:44.000 --> 00:27:50.480
And I think that's such an important point to just sit with, you know, that's a a massive thing that's missing.
00:27:50.880 --> 00:28:07.440
So, Kate, staying with you, when a party makes a big promise on water, on electricity, on roads, housing, and so on, what is the question that we should be asking about municipal authority, funding, delivery, and public accountability?
00:28:07.839 --> 00:28:14.640
Yeah, I mean, I think it does depend on whether the party has held power before and how it's delivered on these promises.
00:28:14.799 --> 00:28:20.000
Um, I think, yeah, looking at a track record of a party's ability to actually deliver is important.
00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:21.920
I mean, what have we seen in the past?
00:28:22.079 --> 00:28:24.160
Are they being honest now about the failures?
00:28:24.319 --> 00:28:36.480
I think that's what we're seeing, which is a bit unsettling around parties not really admitting to the failures of the past and trying to sort of, you know, you see often you're hearing often our parties saying, just give us 50 plus one and we'll do it.
00:28:36.559 --> 00:28:38.000
And it's like, okay.
00:28:38.160 --> 00:28:42.000
Um, you know, like don't put us into a coalition because that's been the problem.
00:28:42.079 --> 00:28:44.559
But we know, like Stay said, that's the reality now.
00:28:44.799 --> 00:28:54.319
So I think seeing um whether they're actually engaging honestly in what hasn't worked, and are they also talking around details about how they're going to do things differently?
00:28:54.480 --> 00:29:02.000
And then, you know, for parties that haven't been in power as well, are they also being um are they looking at these problems differently?
00:29:02.240 --> 00:29:08.319
Are they talking differently around the solutions, or are they just sort of saying the same rhetoric that we've heard before?
00:29:08.559 --> 00:29:13.200
And I think it's important to be thinking across all of those different issues.
00:29:13.359 --> 00:29:19.440
I think delivery capacity and public accountability, let's be honest around what is possible and not possible.
00:29:19.680 --> 00:29:27.920
Some of what I'm hearing just doesn't give me a sense that people are being truly honest around what can actually be done or not.
00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:31.359
And it's sort of the same old promises, and I think people are tired of that.
00:29:31.599 --> 00:29:35.759
Obviously, it's difficult to be honest around what can happen and what can't happen.
00:29:35.920 --> 00:29:38.640
But that's what people are asking for in communities.
00:29:38.799 --> 00:29:41.599
Like, you know, let's be honest about what's going to happen and not happen.
00:29:41.839 --> 00:29:54.000
We will understand and be reasonable if you're giving us proper information and the kinds of solutions where we feel like actually this is possible, not just sort of pie in the sky stuff that we're used to.
00:30:07.759 --> 00:30:14.079
In this episode, we've heard why a local government election is about more than a change of political leadership.
00:30:14.319 --> 00:30:27.599
Councils make consequential choices, but the services residents rely on also depend on the municipal and administrative staff, working systems, available money, and decisions beyond the municipality itself.
00:30:27.920 --> 00:30:32.000
Those pressures do not excuse a party from explaining its promises.
00:30:32.240 --> 00:30:35.200
They make the explanation more necessary.
00:30:35.440 --> 00:30:38.480
What problem is the party trying to solve?
00:30:38.799 --> 00:30:42.160
Is its proposed solution within a municipality's power?
00:30:42.400 --> 00:30:43.599
How would it pay for it?
00:30:43.759 --> 00:30:48.960
And what can residents learn from its record or from the way it responds to them now?
00:30:49.680 --> 00:30:52.960
There may be different answers in different municipalities.
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Across this series, we'll take a closer look at those questions through the issues that shape people's lives.
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Next time, we turn to land.
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Who makes decisions about its use?
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Whose rights are recognized?
00:31:05.440 --> 00:31:08.960
And what can local government do about access to it?
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I'm Tisneem Esop, and you've been listening to Just Access, The Real Democracy, a podcast from Parry, the Public Affairs Research Institute.
00:31:17.759 --> 00:31:21.599
To learn more about Parry and its research, visit parry.org.za.
00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:28.480
Follow or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and please share this episode with others and keep listening.
