The City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality owns thirteen companies, aka “Municipal Owned Entities”. They are perpetually in trouble – for many reasons, reasons which include that whenever residents pay their dues, the money goes into a main “sweeping account” and is only thereafter distributed to every department and entity. The City is also constantly reported to be in financial trouble. Hell, it was one of the 69 municipalities whose Equitable Share allocation from the national fiscus was withheld by the Minister of Finance in July this year due to issues such as having an unfunded budget, the usual financial mismanagement accusations, and issues around its reported R10 billion deal with organised labour. The City is, by quite a distance, the most corporatised municipality in the Republic.

Thus, when the opportunity came to directly ask two questions related to these issues to the men and women who are vying to lead it after the elections of 4 November, I jumped at it, and did…this last Friday, at the Joburg Theatre.

Let’s indulge.

Who Is Who In The Joburg Zoo

Eight political parties were present at Friday’s Joburg Mayoral Debate, hosted by the National Media Group (formerly Independent Media Group). In alphabetical order, they were;

• ActionSA: Dr Bongani Mabizela (obo Herman Mashaba)

• Al Jama-Ah: Cllr Ashley Mama

• Build One South Africa^: Nobuntu Hlazo-Webster, MP

• Community First Movement: (Didn’t catch the participant’s name. Askies)

• Democratic Alliance: Luyolo Mphithi, MP (obo Helen Zille)

• Economic Freedom Fighters: Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng

• RISE Mzansi: Lukhona Mnguni

• AC: (Also didn’t catch his name. Askies)

The Questions

As I say, I asked two questions, one about Joburg’s entities and another about its finances. In the former, I sought a clear position from the candidates on what they intend to do with the entities, given that some of the political parties had been campaigning to say they would shut them down, others were agnostic, and others intended to rationalise them.

In the latter, I sought to understand their stance in relation to the equitable share allocation of the national budget that goes to municipalities. Specifically, which of them would advocate for an increase, given that the overwhelming majority of the population simply cannot afford to pay for municipal services and the purpose of that instrument is to ensure that everyone can at the very least receive these basic (municipal) services, whilst enabling municipalities to adequately service the rest of the populace who can afford to pay.

The answers, when they came, were interesting and illuminating. Some of them doubled down on the party’s position. Others detracted somewhat. Others were entirely silent. They follow below, but it’s proper that I share the following two notes before you get angry at some of the candidates or their parties:

• Not all candidates answered the questions. I cannot be certain why they did not. However, it may be that some had no prepared answers in this regard, or that they were not given the opportunity to come back and answer them, or that they simply ran out of their allotted time.

• Some of the candidates answered only one of the two questions.

However, before we jump into the answers, a little bit of (further) context is important.

Context

In respect of the entities, there are three things worth noting that, funny enough, in a conversation with both Hlazo-Webster and Mnguni, I gained the impression that some of the candidates understood. At a global level, any reorganisation, reconfiguration or liquidation would first have to be part of an extensive Organisation Review process. This is highly regulated in law, in that

1. the Mayor’s powers in this regard are rather constrained, with the law placing responsibility (and power) for this in the hands of the City Manager,

2. in a best-case scenario, this review would take a minimum of 18 months and most likely 36 months, and

3. there are other levers the Mayor could lawfully pull, through the City Manager, to achieve substantially the same objects.

I was happy that they understood and accepted these basic facts, notwithstanding their prospects of winning the top job. That part, re prospects, is far out of the scope of this conversation.

Second, on the question of the finances, it was on the back of the reality that we have an unemployment rate of over 33%, 7 in 10 young people are unemployed, approximately 40% of our fellow countrymen depend on social grants to survive, municipalities are owed almost half a trillion rand (of which 70% is owed by residents), we dedicate no more than 10% of nationally raised revenue to municipalities and and fund 95% of provincial government needs, whilst municipalities are only able to cover about 60% of their expenses from “customers” (residents, business and other government institutions), the rest has to be somehow fashioned from the ether.

Anyway, now for the answers;

The Answers (in the order they answered)

Lukhona Mnguni (RISE Mzansi)

1. Entities: The service delivery entities must come back into core city administration. This is something the party has been campaigning about since, at least, the launch of his Mayoral Campaign.

2. Funding: The Minister of Finance’s additional R20b funding to municipalities is an insult to the needs, and it requires some scrutiny. The City must be part of collective advocacy, alongside SALGA and civil society, to have the equitable share to municipalities increased.

Cllr Ashley Mama (Al Jama-Ah)

1. Entities: The entities must be directed to work for the development of the city and its people. Further, the City must have its own MOE for mining, given how much mineral resources it sits atop, and the glaring need for employment opportunities in the communities of Johannesburg.

Bongani Baloyi (Mkhonto Wesizwe Party)

1. Entities: He would collapse those entities that are core back into the city administration, such as City Power, Joburg Roads and Joburg Water, but non-core entities such as the Joburg Market can remain and do what they are currently busy with.

2. Funding: Additional Funding alone won’t be enough. The city’s people must be enabled to develop economically such that they can afford basic services independent of State support. Not only must the cost of living be brought down, but residents (especially those in townships) must be empowered and enabled to become small-scale power producers and sell back electricity to the grid.

Nobuntu Hlazo-Webster, MP (Build One South Africa^)

1. Entities: Essential service delivery entities must be folded back into the City Core administration. However, this must be consequent upon an entity-by-entity review so that this process is conducted properly.

Dr Bongani Mabizela (ActionSA, on behalf of Herman Mashaba)

1. Entities: Herman will collapse all the entities back to the city. Their view is that will decrease costs from the rationalisation of all the shared corporate expenses that will be done away with as a result.

Luyolo Mphithi, MP (Democratic Alliance, on behalf of Helen Zille)

1. Funding: The party is aligned with the Minister of Finance’s Medium Term Budget Policy Statement announcement as regards conditional grant reform. The view is that this will lead to performing municipalities receiving the funding they need to perform their duties properly.

There it is. I will say no more. I asked my questions, gave you the context, and these were the crux of the answers received. Make of that what you will.

Alright, that’s it for today. Be back soon and, if no one else has told you, we love you.

SC

^This edition has been edited to correct the name of Build One South Africa. The party deleted the suffix “With Mmusi Maimane” from its name in November 2024, and this was gazetted in December of the same year. We appreciate the correction received from the party.

This newsletter is a product of the Better Governance Initiative NPC. We are committed to keeping it, and the rest of our civic education work, as widely accessible as possible. If you find it valuable and believe more people should see it, please partner with us and power our efforts by donating to fund our work. You can do so here: https://www.bettergovernance.org.za/donate

Find out more about the Better Governance Initiative NPC by visiting our website: www.bettergovernance.org.za. There you will find out everything about what BGI is all about, our policies, as well as how to get involved. Together, we’ve already shown what active citizens can achieve. Let’s continue building a stronger, more accountable democracy and equitable society together.

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A Better Governance Initiative Press Statement by Sabelo Chalufu, Founder & Director

Release: Immediate

Date: 08 October 2026

BGI Cautions NERSA That Public Participation On Eskom Increase Application Cannot Be A Rubber-Stamping Exercise

Note to Editors: A soundbite by Sabelo Chalufu is available here.

This morning, we presented our submission to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA), in which we implored the members of the Regulator to decline Eskom’s application for an 8.83% increase to the retail price of electricity. In the engagement, we cautioned NERSA that this is not a rubber-stamping exercise in which Eskom simply asks for an increase and NERSA grants it simply because it had previously granted a multi-year increase.

We submitted that the letter and the spirit of the law do not allow NERSA to simply shrug its shoulders, paying little regard to the cries of the public, saying it had previously approved multi-year increases. Indeed, our courts have repeatedly made themselves clear with regard to public participation processes and the requirements on organs of state. Instead, it is required to meaningfully engage with the submissions before it in this process and strike a fair balance between the interests of the public, customers, and Eskom.

These submissions include those of 18,206 signatories to our petition objecting to the increase, and 83 respondents to our survey seeking to surface the impact of the ever-increasing cost of electricity. We demonstrated that for those respondents whose households earn less than R5,000 per month, electricity accounts for approximately 45% of their income.

The risk of litigation ensuing as a result of NERSA potentially insufficiently engaging with the requirements of the law regarding its responsibilities in this process, as it comes to the decision it will ultimately make, cannot be underestimated, particularly on matters that have such far-reaching consequences. Consequently, as a result of the open discussion with NERSA’s panel members on our submission, we will be making a supplementary submission on issues canvassed within the next seven days.

At present, our point is crisp; we have some confidence in NERSA coming to a just determination on this application in a similar way as we have confidence in the ability of Eskom’s leadership and management to sustainably and profitably run the entity on the back of the previous tariff increases. A further increase is not necessary and even less desirable.

BGI appreciates the support of every single person who signed and shared our petition, as well as those who responded to our survey. Once again, it was their involvement, as active citizens, that has shaped our submission, which is now set up to shape the decision that NERSA ultimately arrives at. BGI’s submission and our presentation are available here.

Issued By:

Sabelo Chalufu,

Founder & Director

For Enquiries:

BGI Communications

media@bettergovernance.org.za

About Us:

Better Governance Initiative NPC is an independent, non-partisan civic organisation working to help build a more capable, accountable and people-driven government in South Africa. We equip citizens with insights and tools to engage government, drive strategic advocacy, and strengthen public participation in governance processes. Our work bridges the gap between policy and lived experiences, helping people shape the systems that shape all our lives.

To support our work, please make a small donation at: https://www.bettergovernance.org.za/donate

A Better Governance Initiative Press Statement by Sabelo Chalufu, Founder & Director

Release: Immediate

Date: 05 October 2026

Implementation Will Be the Real Test of the Changes Promised in the Revised White Paper on Local Government

Note to Editors: A soundbite by Sabelo Chalufu is available here.

The Better Governance Initiative NPC (“BGI”) welcomes Cabinet’s adoption of the Revised White Paper on Local Government, and we commend the Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs for incorporating the views of South Africans in the process thus far. This deepens the constitutional promise of a participatory democracy.

BGI contributed to this review process by enabling over 400 South Africans to participate in shaping the future of our municipalities through making formal submissions in the process, facilitated and coordinated by us in two surveys between 2025 and 2026. The first set of submissions responded to the Department of Cooperative Governance’s Discussion Document on the Review, and the second was in response to the draft Revised White Paper.

We are particularly excited that, in the two stages, seven of fourteen sets of recommendations we had made were substantially reflected in the draft Revised White Paper. This demonstrates the transformative power of creating easily accessible avenues through which citizens can understand public policy, engage in governance processes by making their voices heard, and constructively contribute to the decisions that shape their communities, facilitated and enabled by a capable, non-partisan civil society.

The initial recommendations we made include: streamlining the municipal system; better-defined and enforced boundaries between political leaders and administrative officials; minimum competency requirements for municipal leadership; the regulation of coalitions and the requirement to ensure implementation through clear timelines and institutional responsibilities.

In response to the Draft Revised White Paper, we made further submissions, highlighting those recommendations that remained insufficiently addressed in the draft. We also highlighted new issues that residents raised about the draft. These are matters residents felt the draft did not meaningfully address. These issues include: municipalities as engines of economic growth; youth unemployment and economic inclusion; public transport and spatial integration; the unfunded mandates crisis; escalation pathways and early intervention for municipalities in crisis; and reforms to the tender and procurement system.

BGI eagerly awaits the launch of the Revised White Paper, where we will see the extent to which Government has meaningfully engaged these further submissions. Given Government’s responsiveness to our initial recommendations, we have reason to be confident that the final White Paper will substantively incorporate these.

We welcome the COGTA Minister’s stated intention to immediately begin implementation, including by the development of a Transition Plan and operationalising the Transition Management Body. In our submissions, we had informed COGTA that residents were concerned about the prospects for successful implementation, fearing that the review process would not be met with adequate follow-through. Further, whilst they supported the concept of the TMB, their view was that it ought to include the public and civil society, and also ensure that it reports on and communicates on its work in accessible language and platforms so that residents not only stay informed, but also understand the processes and continue to shape positive outcomes with government.

The work of shaping the future of local government continues through the legislative and policy processes that will give effect to the Revised White Paper, as well as through the upcoming local government elections on 4 November 2026. BGI will continue working with residents and institutions as we demonstrate what active citizens can achieve when they are informed, organised and equipped to meaningfully participate in shaping the future of their communities and our country towards greater opportunity, equality and shared prosperity.

Issued By:

Sabelo Chalufu,

Founder & Director

For Enquiries:

BGI Communications

media@bettergovernance.org.za

About Us:

Better Governance Initiative NPC is an independent, non-partisan civic organisation working to help build a more capable, accountable and people-driven government in South Africa. We equip citizens with insights and tools to engage government, drive strategic advocacy, and strengthen public participation in governance processes. Our work bridges the gap between policy and lived experiences, helping people shape the systems that shape all our lives.

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A Better Governance Initiative Press Statement by Sabelo Chalufu, Founder & Director

Release: Immediate

Date: 25 September 2026

Some South Africans Are Cutting Savings, Food And Other Essentials To Keep Up With Electricity Price Increases

Seven in every ten respondents to a Better Governance Initiative NPC (“BGI”) survey on the Impact of the Cost of Electricity have had to cut back on household savings in order to keep up with the rising cost of electricity, whilst two-thirds have reduced their expenditure on food and a third have reduced their expenditure on healthcare needs.

Just under half of respondents have household earnings not exceeding R5,000 a month, whilst a quarter do not exceed R15,000 a month. When it comes to direct expenditure on electricity, a third of respondents spend between R750 and R1,500 a month, whilst a quarter spend less than R750 and a fifth spend between R1,500 and R2,500.

“We had to cut down on food. As a result, some months we starve because we have to constantly buy electricity,” said Respondent #10, in response to a question asking if there was anything else they wished to highlight.

Respondent #24 went further, saying, “The psychological toll it takes to decide which needs are the most needed during the time of needing has a really negative impact on my mental health. I have to consider my kids.”

In order to keep up with rising costs today, our countrymen are compelled to feed their families less, gamble with their families’ healthcare, and spend today that which would have enabled them to be resilient against tomorrow’s emergencies. They tell us so in their own words. However, as Respondent #24 highlights, and there are several such responses, the impact is not just financial. The impact of the crushing pressures that residents are under is psycho-social as well, with far-reaching consequences for our families and society.

Whilst these may only be the experiences of the limited number of those who have responded to our survey, we have no doubt that millions of other residents are experiencing similar pressures, if not more. These are not just numbers on a spreadsheet. They are our neighbours, our family, friends. Indeed, this is our collective present-day reality as South Africans.

These residents, and their responses, are why we are advocating for NERSA to decline Eskom’s application for an 8.83% increase to the retail price of electricity. At some point, residents’ voices must be heard by the regulator. Thus, we seek to prevail on the regulator on their behalf, and alongside them, for our collective good.

The purpose of the survey is to surface the impact that the ever-increasing cost of electricity has had on households and small businesses. The responses will be included in our submission to NERSA. The anonymous respondents are self-initiated and drawn from various sources, including the over 17,500 signatories raising awareness about Eskom’s 8.83% increase application, whilst others are subscribers to our newsletter & mailing list, and others had the survey recommended to them by a friend/ family.

The survey is still available at https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/W6s43unwpp, takes less than 5 minutes to complete and will automatically close at 5 PM tomorrow, Saturday, 26 September 2026.

Issued By:

Sabelo Chalufu,

Founder & Director

For Enquiries:

BGI Communications

media@bettergovernance.org.za

About Us:

Better Governance Initiative NPC is an independent, non-partisan civic organisation working to help build a more capable, accountable and people-driven government in South Africa. We equip citizens with insights and tools to engage government, drive strategic advocacy, and strengthen public participation in governance processes. Our work bridges the gap between policy and lived experiences, helping people shape the systems that shape all our lives.

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What is to be done when our 257 municipalities owe R120 billion to, mostly, Eskom and Water Boards? What is to be done when Eskom is owed R467 billion by government, business and us, the residents? What about when the sixty-nine municipalities whose equitable share allocations were withheld by National Treasury in July are ALL in financial distress, with residents responsible for 73% of the R217 Billion owed to these municipalities?

That’s quite a lot, right? Mhlali, rest assured, from wherever you are across the country, I can feel you feeling more and more overwhelmed with each of those questions. I don’t promise you, in this edition, answers to all these questions, but I do propose at least one, and if you have been following what we have been busy with outside of the newsletter, you would already know it.

Let’s indulge.

Here Is The Challenge

Eskom has recently applied to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (“NERSA”) and asked for an 8.83% increase in the retail price of electricity.

This is in a country with over 33% unemployment; about seven in ten young people are unemployed; 66% of us live below the upper bound poverty line; and 40% of us are reliant on social grants to supplement our household incomes.

Let me take a step back, though.

Consider the funding of municipalities and provinces. The funding models of both are, to put it mildly, rather peculiar. From the national budget, we collectively fund through a direct unconditional transfer (the “equitable share”) from National Treasury only 10% of municipal financial needs, whereas we fund provinces for 95% of their needs. The balance, in both scenarios, must be raised by each of these from their customers.

Now, just to remind us, the biggest chunk of provincial budgets goes to education and public healthcare…for the benefit of residents. Further, the main consumers of municipal services are…also residents. Somehow, we adopt the view that the same “customer” who requires subsidisation for basic education and healthcare somehow does not require the same level of subsidisation when they use basic services such as water and electricity.

To put it politely, there is an absurdity there. (And, yes, I accept that residents are not ONLY consumers of municipal services, but that does not take the issue much further.)

73%!!! That’s the magic number.

That is how much is owed by residents from the R217 billion that the 69 municipalities I referred to earlier. Ngeke! We just can’t afford yet another increase. And now begins the answer I promised to deliver.

So What Are We Doing About It?

“We are a very large family as (sic) are many in my place of residence. The rise in electricity cost has meant a cut back on groceries and other necessities that make a home dignified, the cost of electricity has also meant that pre-primary children in my household cannot attend creche as the money that is supposed to cover thier (sic) tuition is being redirected to cover our monthly electricity bill.” – Anonymous Respondent #3

You guessed it. We are fighting back!

Above are the words of one of the Respondents to the survey we are running. This is what most families are going through as they battle to contain the rising cost of living.

It is the second action step in our campaign against Eskom’s application. The first was a petition that we launched two Saturdays ago, seeking to raise awareness of the issue. And now, we have kicked things up a notch with the survey. Long-time subscribers would be familiar with both elements, as they are a normal part of our active citizenship toolkit.

The purpose of the survey is to supplement the submission we will be making to NERSA by getting residents’ direct input on their lived experiences of the ever-increasing price of electricity and the impact it has had on their households and businesses. It is anonymous, asks seven substantive questions, takes less than five minutes to complete, and empowers us with direct resident evidence from their own voices about the impact in their lives.

[I pause to record that yes, I would love to be opining a little bit more than this call to action, but, frankly, there is little time for that right now. It is time to act!]

And Now, You (And Me, Together)!

Our petition has now passed 17,000 signatures, and the survey is steadily approaching 100 responses. We need more, for both. Many more.

Our community has always been clear: we will not change our country and create a better one unless we are actively involved in creating said better country. It begins with each one of us.

Here is the link to sign the petition: https://c.org/cbqSFVsm9F

Here is the link to complete the survey: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/W6s43unwpp

You can do either or both. And, as usual, please share this in your community. We are closing both at the end of this week because we need a few days to collate everything in time for a timely submission to NERSA early next week.

Thank you for fighting to create a better country with us, as always.

Alright, that’s it for today. Be back soon and, if no one else has told you, we love you.

SC

This newsletter is a product of the Better Governance Initiative NPC. We are committed to keeping it, and the rest of our civic education work, as widely accessible as possible. If you find it valuable and believe more people should see it, please partner with us and power our efforts by donating to fund our work. You can do so via our Back-A-Buddy Campaign available here or here: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/help-build-the-better-governance-initiative

Find out more about the Better Governance Initiative NPC by visiting our website: www.bettergovernance.org.za. There you will find out everything about what BGI is all about, our policies, as well as how to get involved. Together, we’ve already shown what active citizens can achieve. Let’s continue building a stronger, more accountable democracy and equitable society together.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

This newsletter is a product of the Better Governance Initiative NPC. We are committed to keeping it, and the rest of our civic education work, as widely accessible as possible. If you find it valuable and believe more people should see it, please partner with us and power our efforts by donating to fund our work. You can do so via our Back-A-Buddy Campaign available here or here: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/help-build-the-better-governance-initiative

[Back to Regular Programming]

What if we could rewrite the Constitution, chapter and verse? What if we could get rid of those things we don’t like about how it’s structured, and replace them with those we think are necessary?

Well, actually, Parliament facilitates such a process every year. And, every now and then, they amend the Constitution. And so, last month we ran a very brief survey to take input into BGI’s Parliamentary submission on the annual review of the Constitution, and we sent it at the beginning of the month. This edition gives you a brief summary of what we proposed to change.

Let’s indulge.

On Elections

We begin by proposing a threshold for representation. That is, the minimum level of support a political party must achieve in an election in order for that party to be represented in Municipal Council, Provincial Legislature and Parliament.

Our view is that the proportional representation system has produced significant party fragmentation, particularly at the municipal level. In principle, we continue to support its intention of enabling the representation of the breadth of views and communities, but we believe a minimum floor could reduce fragmentation, strengthen coalition stability, and ensure that represented parties carry a meaningful mandate. We suggest that this could theoretically start at 0.5%, but we propose 1%.

We are also of the view that Public Representatives (Councillors, MP’s and MPL’s) should hold a minimum level of education before assuming public office. The reality is that public office involves serious fiduciary responsibility, management of significant public resources, participation in law-making and policy-making. We suggest that a minimum of grade 12/ matric is both reasonable and non-exclusionary.

On Coalitions and the Formation of Governments

We are now firmly in Coalition Country, with successive elections confirming that no single party can expect to govern alone in any sphere for the foreseeable future. Our assessment is that the constitutional and legislative framework for coalition governance is woefully inadequate, with the country effectively being governed on nothing but pinky promises between politicians.

There is absolutely no institutional support for political parties in navigating complex multi-party negotiations and coalitions, and there is no mechanism for mediating political disputes within a coalition before they collapse into governance crises.

We therefore propose, and I will admit this is by far the proposal the policy nerd in me is most excited about, that the country create a new Chapter Nine institution called the “Coalition Commission.” Its work would be to provide institutional support to political parties in negotiating and managing coalitions; receiving and maintaining a public register of all coalition agreements; facilitating voluntary mediation of disputes; and reporting annually to Parliament on the state of coalition governance.

We also highlight that the period provided for in the Constitution for the election of the President, Premiers and Mayors (they’re in the Municipal legislation, not the Constitution) is far too short in the coalition era. It requires that they must be elected within 14 days of the election being declared. Bahlali, we also what happened in 2024. We don’t want such to happen again. If we’re being completely honest, the 14 days in the Constitution was designed when the ANC did not believe they would lose power. They are now a 40% party, whose future prospects are…troubling. Thus, we propose extending the period to 30 days.

On Municipal Funding And Support

Next we deal with three topics in Municipalities: funding, how support or intervention should be effected, and ward committees.

Funding: Those who have been following our work over the last year will have seen that we’ve identified municipal funding as the number one constraint in basic service delivery and a key inhibitor to economic growth and resolving unemployment. One of the biggest leakages there is municipalities performing work that belongs to Provincial and National Government without receiving the funding for it from the national fiscus.

This is known as the “Unfunded Mandates” problem, where municipalities take your money to subsidise the delivery of services which are the responsibility of the other two. For example, right now, COGTA and SALGA highlight that municipalities are spending approximately R30 billion every year on these, instead of fixing roads, collecting your refuse and making sure you have water in your pipes. Thus, we propose that this practice be banned and that this prohibition be in the text of the Constitution.

We also propose a way to deal with troubled municipalities better than has been done. You know about the concept of municipalities being placed “in administration”? Right, we say the Constitution provides a better way to handle these things, but it does not detail which mechanism should be used when. We provide an architecture beginning with section 154 support and leading to section 139 administration. We say that the constitution should be explicit on objective criterion for each type of intervention, and not simply leave this to incumbent politicians who may be influenced by their own political interests.

Finally, we say that Ward Committees, the structure of public representation that includes community members in decision-making about their communities, should be made mandatory. Finish and klaar. #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs

On The National Executive

Then we move to National Government. Here we deal with the Deputy Ministers, the Deputy President and the awkward situation of leave/ suspension of members of the National Executive.

On Deputy Ministers, we will lose some supporters with this one, but we simply do not believe there is any political appetite to get rid of them. Why? Patronage. So then, what is to be done about them? We say they must be made full members of Cabinet, and thereby have the power to act when a Minister is away.

We also then say the size of the National Executive must be constitutionally constrained. Right now we have over 70 members, including the President, DP, Ministers and Deputies, with several ministries having two DM’s. Why? No! Let me show you the absurdity of it all; the Constitution has a cap for the maximum number of Members of the Executive in provinces. Municipal Legislation does the same for municipalities. In both cases, the maximum is 10 members outside of the Mayor or Premier. There is no principled reason why national Cabinet should remain uncapped.

We have proposed a cap for Ministers at 20, with Deputy Ministers capped at no more than 25% above the number of Ministers. This would create a maximum of 25 DM’s at full complement, for a total executive of no more than 47 (inclusive of the President and DP).

Then we turn to the DP. The Constitution provides that the DP must support the President and perform any assigned functions. That’s it. Nothing more. Our view is that this makes the Deputy Presidency a practically hollow Office relative to the resources and seniority it commands. We therefore propose an amendment to have the DP also assigned an Executive portfolio (whichever one at any point in time) consistent with practice in several comparable jurisdictions across the world. The DP must do something of substance, man. Oh, and we say he or she must be constitutionally assigned the role of Leader of Government Business, and that this not be left for the relationship between the President and DP.

Then it’s the issue of leave or suspension of Ministers and other members of the executive. Where’s Senzo? Have we finally agreed that he’s effectively suspended even though it is said he is on leave?

Exactly. The fact that the constitution is silent in this regard is an understandable oversight, but we are of the view that times have sufficiently changed as to regulate this. We say the constitution musts be expressly empower the President to suspend a Member of the National Executive, or for any member to take leave, and what must be done in both scenarios. We then say parallel amendments must be made for Provincial and Municipal Executives.

On Funding Guarantees for Key Public Institutions

Then we go to the last topic, the funding of key institutions. What are these institutions, you may ask? The SANDF, Parliament, the Judiciary and Chapter Nine Institutions.

We are of the view that to strengthen democracy, protect the sovereignty of the State and give proper effect to the separation of powers envisaged in our architecture, these institutions must have a minimum level of funding that is dictated by the Constitution, and not left to bargaining and politicking with the government of the day. We detail why that is important and the proposed numbers in each case.

Finally

Overall, our proposals are targeted at closing specific, identified gaps where the constitutional framework as currently written has proved insufficient. We are not proposing wholesale changes…yet, and we look forward to further and deeper engagement on our ideas for change.

You can read the full submission at this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nd1P7VNjN0S9mYoz555StfMkZ9A6uZFD/view?usp=share_link

Alright, that’s it for today. Be back soon and, if no one else has told you, we love you.

SC

Find out more about the Better Governance Initiative NPC by visiting our website: www.bettergovernance.org.za. There you will find out everything about what BGI is all about, our policies, as well as how to get involved. Together, we’ve already shown what active citizens can achieve. Let’s continue building a stronger, more accountable democracy and equitable society together.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

This newsletter is a product of the Better Governance Initiative NPC. We are committed to keeping it, and the rest of our civic education work, as widely accessible as possible. If you find it valuable and believe more people should see it, please partner with us and power our efforts by donating to fund our work. You can do so via our Back-A-Buddy Campaign available here or here: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/help-build-the-better-governance-initiative

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Three things have happened this month that, taken together, tell you everything you need to know about the state of Local Government in South Africa, and about why the people responsible for fixing it keep not fixing it.

At the beginning of the month, National Treasury announced that it was temporarily withholding R13.5 billion in equitable share transfers from 69 municipalities across the country, citing persistent financial mismanagement and failure to address unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

The following week, the Public Protector released a nearly 300-page report finding that the City of Cape Town had committed maladministration in its provision of services to residents of Khayelitsha and Langa. In that report, the PP also made a pointed observation that the service delivery failures it documented were in significant part attributable to budgetary constraints, and directed the Minister of Finance to formally assess whether the equitable share framework adequately supports municipalities and enables them to deliver on their mandate.

On Friday, Parliament convened a joint meeting of four Committees to receive a briefing from the Ministers of Finance and COGTA, the Financial and Fiscal Commission (“FFC”), as well as the South African Local Government Association (“SALGA”) on the withholding decision, a meeting that produced the most significant parliamentary exchange I have witnessed this year.

Let’s indulge.

The Decision to Withhold Funding

Let me start with the withholding, because the political framing around it has been almost entirely wrong.

National Treasury’s decision has been broadly welcomed as a firm and overdue intervention. The municipalities in question have chronic financial management problems. Unfunded budgets, unpaid bulk suppliers, years of irregular expenditure without consequence. The frustration is understandable. But here is the problem with that framing, and the FFC and SALGA laid it out with precision on Friday.

One of Treasury’s stated reasons for the withholding is that municipalities have not paid their bulk suppliers (ie; Eskom, and the water boards). Treasury’s solution to this problem is, bizarrely, to withhold the very money that municipalities need to pay those suppliers. One organ of state owes another organ of state money, and National Treasury’s response is to remove the funds that would discharge the debt.

Bahlali, you cannot simultaneously demand payment and remove the means of payment. But there is a more fundamental problem with this intervention.

The equitable share is not a performance incentive for municipalities. It is a constitutionally mandated transfer. That is, it is Parliament’s mechanism for giving effect to the Constitution’s Section 214’s requirement that national revenue must be equitably divided among the three spheres of government.

Its primary purpose is to fund free basic services, the funding of which is most needed by poor households, but from which funding everyone benefits. When you withhold it, you are punishing the residents who depend on it for water, electricity and sanitation, not the officials who have mismanaged the municipality. These are residents who, in most cases, are already not paying their municipal bills precisely because they do not have the money.

The equitable share that Treasury is withholding is the lifeline municipalities need for services to reach residents. Withholding it punishes communities for arrears they did not create and cannot fix

And then, COGTA

The Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister and (IFP President), Velenkosini Hlabisa, raised a point that has received insufficient attention. I mean, first, I was pleasantly surprised to see him raising, sharply, that COGTA disagreed with Treasury’s decision. He says their position is that a different mechanism could have been used to achieve the solution Treasury wanted.

His explanation for why is crisp. COGTA says that in the same way municipalities are not paying bulk suppliers, national and provincial government departments are not paying for the services they consume from municipalities. For example, Organs of state owe municipalities R11.6 billion (an amount coincidentally close to the total the Treasury is withholding).

Minister Godongwana, to his credit, acknowledged this and indicated he would instruct National Departments and Provinces to meet their 30-day payment obligations or face a similar withholding of their transfers.

A clear consensus is emerging: apply the rule symmetrically, or do not apply it at all. Which takes me to what I thought was the most significant intervention in the meeting, which came from…an organisation you have probably have never heard about.

The Firecracker

There is a little-known Chapter Thirteen organisation. It’s called , surprise surprise, the “Financial and Fiscal Commission.” Its job, per the constitution, is to make recommendations on financial issues to Government, Parliament, Provincial Legislatures and any other authorities determined by the law. Caught up? Good.

FFC Chairperson, Dr Patience Nombeko Mbava, made an argument that all but stopped the room. At the very least, I suspect it stopped the hearts of the National Treasury delegation for a few minutes.

She made it plain: we have been here before! Eleven years ago. The same problems, the same parliamentary discussions, the same resolutions. Nothing implemented. The tools exist (the law already criminalises financial misconduct), but eleven years of unenforced instruments show the gap is the political will to enforce consequence management against accounting officers, not a shortage of funds or frameworks.

Then she moved to the most biting parts. She said, obo the FFC, what the National Treasury purports to have done is not permitted in law. The argument goes as follows. First, section 216(2) of the Constitution speaks of the stopping of funds to municipalities. The Division of Revenue Act provides for the withholding of conditional grants. The equitable share is unconditional. Second, National Treasury invoked Section 216(2) but used the language of withholding, which is a term that applies only to conditional grants under the Division of Revenue Act (which Treasury did not invoke).

Therefore, the FFC’s position, stated plainly, is this: the unconditional equitable share can be stopped only by Parliament, not Treasury, through the proper constitutional and legislative process. The executive (Treasury) does not have unilateral authority to withhold it.

Later, Minister Godongwana acknowledged the textual and sequencing concerns raised by the FFC and promised a legal opinion. By the end of the meeting, the joint committee Chairpersons had directed that Treasury, COGTA and the FFC meet urgently and revert within seven days.

Interestingly, the Parliamentary Budget Office (the unit in Parliament that exists precisely to provide Parliamentarians with non-partisan financial analysis and advice) was invited to attend the meeting but not to present. Read that again.

As a solution, the FFC proposed two resolution tracks.

1. Remedy this instance lawfully. Regularise the intervention through the correct constitutional process, discipline officials rather than allocations, and protect free basic services while the intervention runs its course.

2. And fix the framework so it never recurs by amending the Division of Revenue Act to close the legal gap Treasury exploited, aligning the MFMA enforcement provisions with proper parliamentary oversight, and applying a differentiated approach that distinguishes structurally constrained municipalities from repeat governance failures.

She basically said, government must first support municipalities to comply and only apply fiscal sanctions as a last resort.

Enter SALGA

[For those who may not know, SALGA represents the Municipalities. The idea is they local government must, amongst other things, be able to advocate for itself and the communities it represents in the relevant political structures of the Republic, in its own stead, over and above the role of the COGTA Minister and MEC’s.]

SALGA put the human scale on the table. The withholding affects approximately 3.4 million households. When you multiply that by the average household size, you begin to understand what is at stake. Fifteen of the 69 municipalities have zero months of cash coverage (cash in the bank to pay for whatever is needed). Six cannot report at all. Twenty sit below one month.

Here is the paradox that SALGA named most clearly. R158.3 billion of the R218 billion owed to municipalities as at March 2026 is owed by households. These are ordinary people who either cannot afford to pay at all or are short-paying.

The equitable share that Treasury is withholding exists precisely to socialise these costs, to ensure that the inability of residents, especially the poor, to pay does not collapse the municipal revenue base. Withholding it removes the mechanism designed to solve the very problem Treasury is citing as justification for withholding it.

Which brings me to the Public Protector’s reports, and an observation that I want us to sit with.

The Lived Experience

The Public Protector, in a report released last week, found that the City of Cape Town Metro Municipalities, generally regarded as one of South Africa’s best-managed municipalities, committed maladministration in its provision of services to two of its poorest communities.

She found that sewerage infrastructure was not being maintained, water access was inadequate. Fire safety equipment was non-functional for years. Clinics had no smoke detectors. Residents had no lease agreements, title deeds, or reliable sanitation. The findings are damning and, I’d say, deservedly so.

However, buried in the observations section of the 292-page report is something that deserves to be read alongside Treasury’s recent withholding decision.

The Public Protector notes that throughout the investigation, the City of Cape Town repeatedly indicated that critical interventions could not be fully implemented due to budgetary constraints. She noted that the service delivery challenges raise broader questions about whether the existing intergovernmental fiscal framework sufficiently supports municipalities with extensive informal settlements and significant infrastructure backlogs.

She then directed, in remedial action that the Constitutional Court has determined is “binding”, the Minister of Finance to formally assess within six months as to whether the existing equitable share allocations adequately support municipalities, and to report the findings within sixty days of completing that assessment.

BOOM!!!

A Chapter 9 institution has now directed the Minister of Finance to assess whether the funding model is adequate. Mind you, this is part of what we (at BGI NPC) asked Parliament to require in March, as it was considering the budget. Better late than never, I suppose.

Let that land.

The Public Protector has now found a “well-run” municipality guilty of maladministration in serving its poorest residents and has linked that maladministration directly to the funding issue we have been raising. She has simultaneously directed the Minister of Finance to assess whether the funding model that was supposed to enable those services is actually adequate.

Mhlali, here is the point we have been making for months, put vividly, if the City of Cape Town cannot adequately serve Khayelitsha and Langa within existing fiscal constraints, what exactly are we asking of these 69 (mostly rural and poor) municipalities Treasury has just withheld from?

Gauteng and the Anti-Illegal Immigration Protests

However, if Khayelitsha and Langa feel distant, consider what else happened on Friday. The Public Protector released another report.

This report investigated the crisis that gripped mostly Gauteng townships last year, when children were hospitalised and died after consuming treats and sweets bought from spaza shops.

The PP’s report found that Gauteng municipalities and key provincial departments had failed to effectively enforce food safety and hygiene regulations in the informal business sector. She said the allegations, in the complaint she received, of poor enforcement and weak oversight had been substantiated and found to amount to improper conduct and maladministration. The report further identified widespread systemic failures, including corruption, fraud and false declarations linked to illegal business operations and access to government support.

Mhlali, you will remember that the crisis, when it erupted, was immediately framed in public discourse as an immigration problem. Foreign-owned spaza shops, unregistered traders, and illegal operators selling unregulated products to children in townships.

It quickly got swept up into being part of the anti-(illegal) immigration protests that continue to grip the country, protests which many in the chattering classes continue to frame as a values problem (ie; xenophobia and afrophobia). And yes, some of it is, but the Public Protector’s report tells a different story about the structural foundation of that crisis.

The PP’s report was not primarily a story about who owns the spaza shops. It is a story about municipalities and provincial departments that have stopped enforcing the regulations that govern them. These are food safety inspections, business licensing, health compliance and the maintenance of appropriate hygiene standards.

These are not glamorous services. Nobody marches about them, no politician will campaign on them, and they certainly do not appear in service delivery surveys as top-line concerns.

However, they are the invisible infrastructure of a functional society, and when that infrastructure collapses, the consequences are not abstract. Children have died, bahlali.

So what am I saying here, and how does it track back to the topic at hand?

Underfunded municipalities are forced to triage between deliverables. They are protecting, or attempting to, the services that draw political attention, whilst leaving the regulatory functions that are less visible to collapse first.

Nobody marches about food safety inspections. But when they fail, children die. Children have died.

The connection to underfunding is a structural issue.

A municipality that cannot maintain its systems, pay its staff, or invest in institutional capacity does not have the bandwidth to run a functional food safety inspection regime across thousands of informal traders in sprawling spatial economies.

Triaging is the only rational response to resource scarcity. They are protecting what is most visible and deferring what is not. The regulatory functions that protect communities from invisible harms (contaminated food, unlicensed traders, unregulated products) are exactly what are being deferred, year after year, until something catastrophic forces them back into view.

So, the anti-(illegal) immigration protests are the political consequence of that structural failure. When the regulatory floor has been removed by institutional incapacity, the conditions for community conflict are created. Communities in economic precarity, competing for scarce resources in under-resourced spaces, encounter an unregulated market in which the enforcement mechanisms that would create a level playing field have been hollowed out.

The political narrative that then fills the vacuum (that the problem is who is operating the shops, rather than why nobody is regulating them) is the most dangerous kind, because it is just true enough to be believed and just wrong enough to solve nothing.

So now we have two Public Protector reports. One is about Cape Town failing its poorest residents because ageing sewerage infrastructure in informal settlements cannot be maintained within existing budgets. One about Gauteng municipalities failing to enforce food safety regulations in the informal business sector, with fatal consequences for children.

These are obviously different areas, with different problems and different political contexts, but the structural root is the same. It is municipalities that are underfunded, under-capacitated, and consequently unable to perform the full range of functions the Constitution requires of them.

We have been making this argument for months. The service delivery crisis is, first, a consequence of the funding crisis, before it is a governance crisis. And you cannot fix a funding crisis with accountability alone.

Finally

If there is any solace I take from this week, it is that this argument is no longer ours alone. The FFC has raised it. The Public Protector has raised it. COGTA has raised it. SALGA has raised it.

The consensus is emerging, slowly and painfully, that the accountability argument and the funding argument are not in competition. Both are true, both are necessary, and you cannot do accountability without funding and call it governance.

Rome is on fire. We have been raising the alarm, now the FFC have told us so, the Public Protector is telling us so, and SALGA is telling us so.

The municipalities are burning, the residents are suffering, and the legal framework is being stretched beyond its limits by an executive that has run out of legitimate tools because the proper tools were never built.

The gap is not, and never has been, knowledge. It is political will. And the question, the only question worth asking, is whether the institutions with the authority to act will find that will before the next crisis requires the next emergency meeting of four Parliamentary committees to explain why nothing has changed.

Alright, that’s it for today. Be back soon and, if no one else has told you, we love you.

SC

Find out more about the Better Governance Initiative NPC by visiting our website: www.bettergovernance.org.za. There you will find out everything about what BGI is all about, our policies, as well as how to get involved. Together, we’ve already shown what active citizens can achieve. Let’s continue building a stronger, more accountable democracy and equitable society together.

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This newsletter is a product of the Better Governance Initiative NPC. We are committed to keeping it, and the rest of our civic education work, as widely accessible as possible. If you find it valuable and believe more people should see it, please partner with us and power our efforts by donating to fund our work. You can do so via our Back-A-Buddy Campaign available here or here: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/help-build-the-better-governance-initiative

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South Africa’s Constitution turns thirty years old in 2026. It is one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, but a constitution is only as good as its implementation.

BGI has been engaged this year in parliamentary processes on the national budget, the Local Government White Paper review, and other governance matters. What we have observed is that several aspects of our constitutional framework would benefit from deliberate review and strengthening.

We are doing a brief survey, presenting BGI’s ideas on a range of questions that are of most interest to us. The survey covers sixteen questions across five themes: electoral integrity, coalition governance, local government funding and support, the structure of the national executive, and constitutional funding guarantees for key institutions.

For each question, we give you our position and ask for your thoughts. Your responses will inform BGI’s submission to the Constitutional Review process. Please also feel free to use the free text box to tell us, in your own words, what you think, and if there is anything else you would like Parliament to attend to. Finally, please share this in your community so more people can participate in shaping the democracy of our dreams.

The survey should take approximately 15 minutes to complete. You can find the survey at the following link: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/C1MMMUPNnu

Please don’t postpone completing the survey. We are submitting on Monday, the 6th of July, and we don’t want you to miss out on making yourself heard.

Alright, that’s it for today. Be back soon and, if no one else has told you, we love you.

SC

Find out more about the Better Governance Initiative NPC by visiting our website: www.bettergovernance.org.za. There you will find out everything about what BGI is all about, our policies, as well as how to get involved. Together, we’ve already shown what active citizens can achieve. Let’s continue building a stronger, more accountable democracy and equitable society together.

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Bahlali, this is a brief one.

Please join us tonight for a discussion with young people on the upcoming local government elections, and all things related thereto, such as;

• How Do We Vote Responsibly?

• What is the State of our democracy and electoral system?

• What is the Structure of Local Government and its Elections?

• For whom and how do we vote?

This evening’s chat will be hosted by two amazing young ladies, Tshego Manana and Unathi Kubheka, who’ve invited me to a public conversation on the above. I expect them to give me some hard-hitting questions, which I will do my best to answer honestly, ably supported by Live Madubela, one of our team members at the Better Governance Initiative NPC.

Finally, yes, we will also have an interactive Q&A session for all attendees.

If you’re keen to attend, please register on the following link: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/e2538c67-586c-47cb-922e-67cac2240d0c@90739245-8cb7-4bc6-bb40-5953c2f5baa1

Catch you later, and thank you for your continued support.

[Shoutout to Theto Mahlakoana for giving me, on Twitter, the idea to send this mailer for our community.]

SC

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This newsletter is a product of the Better Governance Initiative NPC. We are committed to keeping it, and the rest of our civic education work, as widely accessible as possible. If you find it valuable and believe more people should see it, please partner with us and power our efforts by donating to fund our work. You can do so via our Back-A-Buddy Campaign available here or here: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/help-build-the-better-governance-initiative

A little over a year ago, I wrote an op-ed in Business Day making a simple argument: local government is everybody’s business, and things will not change until all of us (residents, organised business, civil society, and other spheres of government) take the sector seriously and use our leverage to drive change. I called for all of us to rally behind the cause of fixing local government.

I meant it then. I still mean it now.

Big Business has now properly arrived at the conversation. A few weeks ago, Business Leadership SA and Business Unity SA issued a joint statement on Johannesburg, they also commissioned research, and are loudly exclaiming their willingness to deploy private sector resources behind a recovery programme. This is good, and as a supporter of local government, that excites me immensely. The more voices calling for better, the better.

Let’s look at what they have said, because the “how” matters just as much as the “what”…and some of what they propose or have suggested is concerning for me. You will see shortly why that is.

Let’s indulge.

Let me start with what Big Business got right, because they got important things right.

THE CRISIS IS REAL

Johannesburg is in a genuine crisis. Their data, presented by Genesis Analytics, is striking. A decade of political instability (eight mayors in ten years, motions of no confidence filed in a single coalition by one of its own members) has produced collapsed services, deteriorating infrastructure, and a revenue collection system that is haemorrhaging daily. The city loses more water through leaks and theft than, for example, Cape Town sells. It fails to recover payment for more than a fifth of the electricity it buys from Eskom. Capital expenditure has fallen to 6% of the budget. Maintenance spending is roughly one-eighteenth of the Metro average. These are the cold, hard numbers.

I also agree that business has a legitimate and important role to play. In fact, in that op-ed last year, I specifically highlighted some of the reasons business may be the one whose voice may move the needle. Commercial properties represent over a quarter of property values in Joburg, but contribute more than half of the property rates revenue. Business has skin in this game, real, financial skin, and a legitimate interest in Joburg working.

So the call to engage is right, agreed to and welcome. Their urgency is real, and their willingness to show up and be active participants in the fix (rather than simply complain and invest elsewhere) deserves acknowledgement and support.

The problem in Joburg, however, is not only (mis)management or leadership. It is also money, several billion Rand’s worth of a gap between what the City needs, what it has, and what is required of it by all stakeholders, chief amongst them being the residents.

And this is where I suspect I will probably lose some sympathetic eyes and ears, but hear me out: a municipality that is structurally underfunded does not become well-governed simply by changing who manages the shortfall. There, I said it. And that is where I part company with Big Business’ diagnosis, and it matters, because the diagnosis determines the prescription.

Their framing is that Joburg is not poor, but rather poorly led and mismanaged. They make this argument using per capita expenditure data. It begins with the fact that Joburg spends R18,200 per resident per year, more than Cape Town’s R14,230. From this, they conclude that the problem is not resources but capture. And from that conclusion flows a set of solutions focused on rooting out alleged criminal syndicates, stabilising leadership, restoring revenue collection, and inviting business as a counterparty for a structured recovery.

I do not dispute the claims of corruption. It is real, it is damaging, and it must be rooted out. However, the per capita comparison between the two Cities is not helpful. Here are a few reasons why.

Johannesburg is home to a disproportionate share of South Africa’s poorest residents. It’s wealthier residents cross-subsidise their poorer neighbours at a scale that Cape Town does not. Its infrastructure backlog (accumulated over decades of apartheid spatial planning and post-apartheid underinvestment) is structurally larger and will not catch up quickly enough while we delay spreading economic opportunity around the country. Its geographic spread is greater, and its service delivery obligations extend into far more areas that generate little revenue.

Therefore, the fact that Joburg spends more per capita but somehow delivers less is not simply a management failure. It is the arithmetic of a municipal funding model that was never designed to support what Joburg (and the overwhelming majority of municipalities) are actually being asked, and indeed required, to do.

We, as the Better Governance Initiative NPC, have made this very argument, about municipalities in general, to Parliament. Those who follow our work will recall that our work on the 2026 budget called for an increase in the local government equitable share from 9.4% to 10.9% of nationally raised revenue (a R30 billion correction, using the Department of Cooperative Governance’s own figures).

We argued, and still argue, that the service delivery crisis around the country is, in large part, a direct result of the funding crisis. Before calls for my head grow emerge, I must record. Underfunding does not excuse incompetence, mismanagement, and downright theft.

What underfunding does do, though, is make it easier for these issues to surface, in part, by destroying institutional capacity. A municipality that cannot maintain functional systems, sufficiently invest in its own infrastructure, or pay competitive salaries to its personnel becomes prey. Therefore, governance reform and funding reform are simultaneous, mutually reinforcing imperatives. They are not sequential or mutually exclusive priorities. Any suggestion to the contrary must be rejected with the contempt it deserves.

There is then another difficulty that has now arisen; Minister of Finance’s recent intervention.

Fixing Joburg Funding

The Minister has formally placed the City of Johannesburg on Notice. He argues that it’s budget is unfunded, its R10 billion politically facilitated agreement to fix the pay of its staff is unaffordable, it is in severe financial distress, and the City’s equitable share allocation for July 2026 is at risk unless it takes urgent corrective action.

I understand that impulse, and the desire in some quarters for this intervention.

Frankly, a municipality in financial distress, that passes an unfunded budget, suffers entrenched irregular expenditure is not the kind of institution that should receive national transfers without consequence. On the face of it, the fiscal accountability argument has a clear and understandable logic.

However, I do not support withholding the equitable share as a remedy. And I want to be precise about why.

Threatening to withhold the City’s equitable share will not fix the City. Instead, it will deepen the crisis, and the people who will feel it first are not any syndicates, incompetent managers or the politicians. It will be the residents.

The equitable share is not a performance bonus. It is a constitutionally mandated transfer. It is the constitutional mechanism for giving effect to Section 214’s requirement that revenue be equitably divided among the three spheres of government. Withholding it does not punish syndicates who have captured the municipality’s procurement system. It punishes the residents who depend on the services that the transfer is meant to fund. The people who wake up without water in Soweto and Alexandra are not responsible for the irregular expenditure of the officials who mismanaged their municipality. Cutting the funding due for their benefit because their municipality is badly governed is, to be blunt, collective punishment, not accountability.

What Johannesburg needs, therefore, from National Treasury and COGTA is the kind of structured, collaborative support that Section 154 of the Constitution explicitly contemplates. It is support that builds municipal capacity rather than undermining it further (…and an increase in its equitable share allocation, like many other municipalities).

We know that such an intervention can work. It has been experimented in eThekwini and, for all of that municipality’s troubles, that intervention, for all its limitations, has shown that this is a direction that can work. It brought in expertise, stabilised leadership, and worked with the municipality rather than against its leadership. That appears to be a working model. Financial strangulation, in whatever way it is dressed up, is most certainly not.

ON ADMINISTRATION AND SYNDICATES

Some voices amongst us (not BLSA or BUSA explicitly, but present in the broader conversation) are suggesting that Joburg should be placed under administration. This attractive, particularly in an election year, but let me tell you why I reject this.

I don’t know about you, but I know of not a single municipality that has come out of administration better than it went in. Not one. The evidence is nothing if not unambiguous.

Section 139 administration has a record in South Africa. It is not a good one. Municipalities that have been placed under administration have, without exception that I can identify, emerged in worse condition or simply continued to deteriorate under unelected oversight.

Tshwane’s administration was overturned by the courts, but not before plunging the City into a financial crisis it is only now beginning to recover from, over half a decade later. Emfuleni, in the South of Gauteng, has been in and out of various forms of provincial intervention for years, and remains one of the most distressed municipalities in the country.

Administration is a ham-fisted, topical treatment that has yet to fix the underlying dysfunction anywhere. What it has often done is to remove, or render nugatory, the one accountability mechanism that matters most in a democracy; the vote.

I will be the first to accept that there are bad actors involved in the City’s procurement system. We see it all the time with some of the stranger procurement that hits the press every now and then. So yes, they are a problem, and yes, they must be dealt with. Agreed on all counts.

However, the mechanism for dealing with criminal syndicates is law enforcement. The South African Police Service, the Hawks, the National Prosecuting Authority and the Special Investigations Unit. These institutions exist. They have constitutional mandates. The question we should be asking is why they have not been deployed more effectively against corruption networks in our municipalities.

The answer to that question is not to replace elected municipal leadership with administrators appointed by provincial or national leaders. It is to hold law enforcement to account for its own failures, while simultaneously supporting legitimate elected leadership to govern, and also holding them to account for not governing properly in public, in Parliament, and on any platform we have access to.

And, now, a digression. I won’t lie, this was one of the stranger concerns I had to grapple with when we presented at Parliament. MP’s asked me what must be done about corruption and mismanagement. Some of them seemed shocked when I reminded them that they have the power to summon Mayors to account for the issues in their municipalities. It seemed they had forgotten that as well as the fact that they could also summon law enforcement to account in this regard, too.

I got the impression that, to their minds, the solution to their concerns was to simply not increase the funding of municipalities for so long as their anxieties remain. I do not yet know what is to be done about that, to be completely honest.

To return to Joburg, my view is crisp. Administration will not solve the crisis. In any event, the voters will decide what kind of leadership they want, or if they are happy with the leadership they have right now. The local government elections are coming. That is the democratic mechanism for changing political leadership.

In the meantime, before and after the election, all of us (civil society, business, residents, other spheres of government) must play our part to support the municipality in doing its job. That is what collaboration means. It is not conditional on first having the perfect government, but what we all do while building toward one.

A VIEW FROM RESIDENTS

When BGI asked residents what they wanted from local government reform, they were clear. They asked for accountability, transparency, and services that work. Those are not incompatible with democracy.

In our engagement on the review of the White Paper on Local Government review, residents across the country told us (to tell National Government on their behalf) what they want from the reform of the system.

Their voices are not captured in the per capita expenditure data, but they are the ones the system is supposed to serve.

They told us they want transparency (to know where the money goes, and to have recourse when it is wasted). They told us they want accountability, not just audit outcomes that are noted, cause a media storm for two weeks and then forgotten, but consequences for officials and politicians who fail and those who steal. They told us they want services that are reliable and predictable, not water that runs for two days and stops for five, not roads that are patched and then deteriorate again within months. And they told us, overwhelmingly, that they want both funding and accountability at the same time, not one before the other. Both, simultaneously.

That is the same thing we argued in Parliament. That is the same thing organised business is now saying, even though some of what is highlighted may be different and the power may be differently distributed. The underlying demand is for a local government system that works for all. The disagreement, such as it were, is about how to get there.

That disagreement is worth having openly because the path matters. A path that goes through administration, financial strangulation, and business-led capture of city governance will not arrive at the destination residents are describing. A path that goes through collaborative support, structural funding reform, electoral accountability, and genuine law enforcement might just.

Last year, I called on us to rally behind fixing local government. Day by day, more of us are coming to the party, and I am glad. We are aligned in substance, even if our intentions may differ.

Bahlali, the reality is that Johannesburg, and every other troubled municipality, will not be fixed by any one actor. Not by the politicians alone. Not by business alone. Not by National Government alone. Not by civil society alone, and certainly not by a new Mayor alone, whenever such a new Mayor is elected.

It will be fixed, if it is to be fixed, and it most certainly must be fixed, by all of us doing our part, simultaneously, in the same direction. That is what collaboration means. And that is what we will continue to fight for.

Alright, that’s it for today. Be back soon and, if no one else has told you, we love you.

SC

Find out more about the Better Governance Initiative NPC by visiting our website: www.bettergovernance.org.za. There you will find out everything about what BGI is all about, our policies, as well as how to get involved. Together, we’ve already shown what active citizens can achieve. Let’s continue building a stronger, more accountable democracy and equitable society together.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

This newsletter is a product of the Better Governance Initiative NPC. We are committed to keeping it, and the rest of our civic education work, as widely accessible as possible. If you find it valuable and believe more people should see it, please partner with us and power our efforts by donating to fund our work. You can do so via our Back-A-Buddy Campaign available here or here: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/help-build-the-better-governance-initiative

[Back to Regular Programming]

Bahlali, last year, I ran a survey asking South Africans what they thought needed fixing in local government and invited you to tell government. Three hundred and forty-seven responded, and we submitted every single response, unedited, to the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. Twice.

At the time, I made one singular promise: collaborate with me to try and shape the municipalities of our dreams, and, in turn, I would spare no effort to make sure that what you’ve called for is heard by government, and seriously considered.

Well, we did it, together, and now we’ve taken it a step further.

Let’s indulge.

A Brief Recap

On 7 May 2026, COGTA published the Reviewed Draft White Paper on Local Government, a 124-page reform document that will shape the municipal system for the next generation. It proposes the single biggest package of reforms for our municipalities since 1998.

We clustered the responses received last year into 14 recommendation themes. Thus, these 14 represent BGI’s own synthesis of the public submissions received during last year’s survey. I was happy to see that five of the fourteen recommendation themes we developed from those 2025 responses appear in the draft revised White Paper.

One of government’s proposals in the revised draft, a proposal to abolish “political suitability” as a criterion for appointing Municipal Managers and replacing it with independent panels as well as employment contracts of up to ten years for MM’s, goes much further than even we had ambitiously asked for. There are other examples, too.

Mhlali, I do not think that it is a coincidence. From where I sit, I see it as what happens, and frankly what should happen, when ordinary South Africans engage seriously, from an informed perspective, with government policy processes.

If you’ve been keeping up with our work, you will also be aware that the revised draft also falls short in some places that matter, and these are not insignificant gaps. So, in preparing our response to COGTA’s request for further submissions, we went back to you, and you had more to say.

Between 17 and 27 May, we (now under the BGI banner) ran a follow-up survey on the draft White Paper. We showed respondents what was originally asked for or suggested in 2025, what government now proposes, and asked about the extent to which you were satisfied, if at all.

More South Africans completed the survey. I was excited, and I am so grateful, to see repeat participants (eleven of them, to be precise). These people came back, having participated in the original process, and decided to hold government to account a second time, but now with much more detail. Cumulatively, this brought the total number of unique South Africans who have participated across both surveys to over 400.

What was said this time was sharper and, in some parts, harder. Let me give you a few examples;

• On “consequence management”: 68% of respondents were not satisfied with the draft’s proposals. This was the highest dissatisfaction rating of any question in the survey. People were specific to say they wanted criminal prosecutions, the recovery of stolen public assets and money, and lifetime bans from public office for those found to have stolen public money. The draft does not yet deliver that.

• On municipal finances; only 14% of respondents fully accept the government’s argument that it cannot increase national transfers to municipalities without economic growth first. The majority position, articulated with striking precision in the optional text responses, is that the fiscal constraint is in part a consequence of the corruption within government, mismanagement and the misallocation of funds between National, Provincial and Local Government. Further, that using that failure (the failure to deal with the challenges) as a justification for underfunding municipalities is shifting the costs of Parliament and the State’s failure onto the already over-stretched residents. Residents reject that.

• On government’s proposed implementation body: 92% of respondents do not trust a Cabinet-mandated body to hold the same government accountable. They called for independent oversight, inclusive of civil society, professional bodies, organised labour, and independent experts.

• On the overall picture; only 6% of respondents were fully satisfied with the draft Revised White Paper. The plurality of respondents, at 32%, said it gets some things right but misses critical issues. The clear animating sentiment of this dataset, repeatedly expressed in the optional text responses, was conditional optimism. Abahlali believe that the draft is better than what came before, but they do not yet trust that it will be implemented. Curiously, this tracks with other research that indicates that residents simply don’t trust government enough. One such example is the Edelman Trust Barometer report of 2025. It found that residents gave government a trust score of 36 points (out of 100. By comparison, business scored 68 and Non-Governmental Organisations scored 63.

What We Told COGTA

And so, on the afternoon of 28 May, we sent our formal submission to the Department, in our own name, and on behalf of all the respondents. It included the quantitative and qualitative responses, submitted with respondents’ proxy consent. It included our formal policy positions on every chapter of the draft White Paper.

There were specific asks, such as automatic triggers for Provincial and National Government to intervene in municipalities in crisis, mandatory plain-language quarterly service delivery updates, as well as competency requirements for all councillor candidates.

We also told COGTA that a developmental state, in a developing country, cannot outsource its way to prosperity, and that, at the very least, the basics must be delivered directly by government, in-house.

We told them that the equitable share formula for the funding of municipalities must be reviewed, that funding local government is funding economic growth, and that the proposed transition management body’s reports must be published in plain language for all South Africans (not only tabled in Parliament, and written for policy professionals).

We told them that 92% of respondents do not trust government to hold itself accountable, and that, in fairness, this is a measured response to the documented history of neglect and the generally lackadaisical approach to the implementation of agreed reforms.

Finally, we told them, in the words of one of the respondents: “South Africans are not asking for perfect municipalities. They are asking for accountable, functional, and honest local government. This White Paper must not become another policy document that looks good on paper but changes nothing on the ground.”

What Comes Next

Well, the public comment period has closed (and our submission is in). The White Paper will now be finalised by the Department and submitted to Cabinet for final approval. We will monitor the final document against the draft, against our submissions, and against government’s own implementation roadmap.

In the meantime: thank you, thank you, and thank you. To everyone who participated, from 2025 to date (especially the return soldiers, those who came back and somehow still had a few more words for government), thank you.

To each and every one of you, you are the reason we do what we do. You are the reason that our work has any weight for government to seriously engage. You are the people who make it consequential. For that, I am eternally grateful for everything each of you has done with us in this process.

Oh, alongside the finalisation of the White Paper, government will release a few amendment Acts to give effect to some of what is currently proposed in the draft. You guessed it…we will be there, with you, every step out of the way as we fight hard to create the municipalities of our dreams.

Alright, that’s it for today. Be back soon and, if no one else has told you, we love you.

SC

Find out more about the Better Governance Initiative NPC by visiting our website: www.bettergovernance.org.za. There you will find out everything about what BGI is all about, our policies, as well as how to get involved. Together, we’ve already shown what active citizens can achieve. Let’s continue building a stronger, more accountable democracy and equitable society together.

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This newsletter is a product of the Better Governance Initiative NPC. We are committed to keeping it, and the rest of our civic education work, as widely accessible as possible. If you find it valuable and believe more people should see it, please partner with us and power our efforts by donating to fund our work. You can do so via our Back-A-Buddy Campaign available here or here: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/help-build-the-better-governance-initiative

[Back to Regular Programming]

5,869! That’s the number of votes that were sufficient to catapult two of Joburg’s most recent Mayors to the highest Office in the economic capital of the continent. 5,869 votes.

Those Former Mayors, Bahlali, are Messrs Thapelo Amad and Kabelo Gwamanda of the Al Jama-Ah party, a party that in 2021 earned the royal sum of 17,608 votes. As a result, they won 3 seats in the 270-seat Municipal Council, on 0.95% of the vote. When the coalition of ActionSA, the Democratic Alliance and Many More was toppled in January 2023, Mr Amad was elected Mayor in the coalition led by the African National Congress and Economic Freedom Fighters, and thus began the Mayoral Musical Chairs.

And now the race for who is going to be Joburg’s next Mayor has kicked off, with all the bells and whistles you would expect, including some surprising additions to the conversation.

Let’s indulge.

The Men (and Women) Who Would Be Mayor

Last August, the Democratic Alliance kicked off the campaign by announcing former Cape Town Mayor Helen Zille as their candidate for Johannesburg. Since then, it’s been quite a bumpy ride in Joburg’s political scene. This past Friday, RISE Mzansi announced Lukhona Mnguni, political analyst and Executive Director of the Rivonia Circle NPC, as their candidate.

Mnguni now joins what is fast becoming a crowded field, including former Mayor Herman Mashaba of ActionSA, the Inkatha Freedom Party’s Mlungisi Mabaso (Joburg Member of the Mayoral Committee for Human Settlements) and the Patriotic Alliance’s Kenny Kunene (Joburg MMC for Transport).

The road to election day on 4 November 2026 is long. Its casualties will be many, but the race is slowly taking shape. In a further interesting development, the African National Congress has decided to open up its candidate selection processes to the general public, inviting even non-members to raise their hands to become its Mayoral Candidate in the Metros. The responses have been curious, mostly deriding the party, but I think it’s a half-decent move. Whether or not it will work is another matter entirely.

For now, we do know that the party has a public relations problem, which may disincentivise people from associating themselves with them. Further, News24 reports today that former heavy hitters associated with the party, such as former Gauteng Premiers Mbazima Shilowa and Tokyo Sexwale, as well as Kenny Fihla (CEO of ABSA), have all poo-pood the idea of becoming the candidate. Shame, man.

Spare a thought for the party’s incumbent leadership, in Mr Dada Morero and Mrs Loyiso Masuku, the sitting Mayor and Deputy Mayor, as well as their colleagues (in Joburg and in other Metros), who all appear to have been overlooked and given a resounding Vote of No Confidence. Yikes.

This edition is not about that party, though. It’s about the overall race and, before we rush into predictions, it may be more useful to step back and think carefully about what is actually unfolding. From our position at BGI, we are not (yet) making forecasts about who will prevail. We anticipate that in the coming weeks, however, we will be able to pore through multiple surveys and resident feedback, which should place us in a better position to assess resident sentiment and the electoral possibilities more meaningfully and share our understanding of the terrain.

For now, however, there are two previous pieces of analysis that I think are important reading for anyone trying to understand where Johannesburg may be headed.

The first asks a simple but important question: what does Johannesburg actually need from its next Mayor?

In “No One Is Coming to Save Joburg”, I reflected on the kind of leadership, governance culture, and institutional challenges facing the City and will need to be stabilised in order to rebuild South Africa’s largest city.

The second piece focused less on personalities and more on structure. In particular, the electoral consequences of the budget decisions made in Parliament. To wit, how is the broader political and fiscal environment shaping the election itself?

In “The Budget Will Decide the 2026/27 Municipal Elections”, I argued that budgetary and fiscal choices made in this year’s budget by the parties represented in Parliament are creating conditions that shape general municipal performance, voter sentiment, and ultimately the terrain on which the political parties will be competing. I posited, without suggesting a preference, that the parties in Parliament have, for better or worse, created a political scenario that favours a DA campaign.

Taken together, these two realities matter far more than the campaigns themselves, because the truth is that the mayoral race began long before the upcoming election day. It began five years ago, and has simply been gathering steam through the parties’ candidate selection processes, coalition chaos in the last five years, how parties have been positioning themselves in and out of government, the extent to which municipalities have been delivering services (or not), and whether residents have been feeling that their lives have been improving or deteriorating.

Bahlali, let’s be honest, Joburg will not produce a straightforward majority outcome for any single party. The coalition era is not going away anytime soon. That means the eventual Mayor is probably also unlikely to simply emerge from whichever party receives the highest percentage of votes. Coalition arithmetic, turnout, negotiation, and the performance of smaller parties may all become decisive factors in determining who ultimately governs the city.

The Black Middle Class

I am very curious about this cohort of the electorate, and I suspect they may have an outsized voice in this election. We have some interesting perspectives on them from some of the surveys we have run before, but we need to analyse them a lot more to make meaningful deductions and inferences. For now, it is sufficient to suggest that they will probably be very influential.

Let me tell you a quick story, partially from my own personal and professional experience.

I once lived in a particular neighbourhood in Randburg, in a ward controlled by the DA, with the Councillor at the time being one David Potter. It was historically a white middle-class ward, but during my time there was a fast-growing black middle-class contingent, living mostly in the complexes. Numerically, the racial mix appeared broadly evenly spread.

Potter was nothing if not solid, even before his party took over the City in late 2016, and after they went back into opposition in late 2019. If there was a service failure, I’d sooner get an update and resolution from him, than even my own building manager. My time in that neighbourhood, including when I myself became an member of his party’s branch (I’d later leave party politics in 2023, having first left the DA to support Mashaba in building ActionSA in 2020), taught me one key lesson about the aspirant black middle class in suburbia; they willloudly castigate the DA online and in person, but on election day they either silently vote for them and parties that share some of their policy platforms, or stay away entirely (which benefits these parties anyway).

However, the theory about the black middle class and their slowly increasing support of the DA held all the way until the Congress of the People entered the scene (before they capitulated) and really picked up steam when Mashaba & ActionSA emerged. Suddenly, this cohort had a viable alternative to the DA, and they ran to it in their hundreds of thousands. Not enough to win any wards, at the time, but enough to dent both the DA and ANC’s numbers.

In fact, there is at least one ward in Randburg where ActionSA got the same amount of support (+/-20%) as another in Soweto, proving definitively that the party could take votes from both the DA and the ANC. Except, there was one problem: taking votes from established parties was not ActionSA’s main 2021 goal. The goal was to turn out the checked-out majority.

What has since become clear to me is that the aspirant black middle class appears to be politically homeless. Alternatively, it’s not a monolithic cohort, and parts of it are in search of a new home, whether that home be in ActionSA, Build One SA With Mmusi Maimane, the DA, RISE Mzansi, uMkhonto WeSizwe, or any other party.

For a long time, that home was the ANC. And, in fairness, it delivered for them. Mbeki et al created the “black diamonds” of the boomer generation and the elder millennials who are corporate execs today – one of whom is the very Kenny Fihla, who is said to have shooed the ANC people whispering to him to consider running. In case you are not aware, Fihla is a former ANC MMC in the City.

Then, something in the social contract broke, and a significant portion of this aspirant black middle class has been trying to fashion a home for itself outside the ANC - either in new and new-ish, or other established parties. My uneducated guess is that something is the economy, and its ability to create large numbers of jobs for everybody. And there, dear friends, is where I suspect parties such as ActionSA, Build One SA With Mmusi Maimane, the DA, and RISE Mzansi will feast on the ANC’s losses.

These residents who could be more amenable to changing their votes and respond to campaign messaging around the ANC’s inability to grow the economy, the endemic corruption, and criticism of the competence or otherwise of the incumbent leadership. Such messaging will definitely come from these parties, and much of it will be carried by our friends in the media, especially on issues of the economy.

In edition that is currently in development, I will share with you how I suspect the election will pan out, including the likely coalition scenarios.

Before I am misunderstood, tough, I must also mention. I am not ignoring the EFF and MKP in this regard. Not by a longshot. However, for purposes of this point, the residents I have been talking about have not historically supported these two parties in large numbers. Of course, some residents who fall within this cohort support these two parties, but they are the minority of the parties’ support. Which takes me to the residents…

What About the Residents?

What I’ve been describing is one reason why residents should pay close attention not only to who parties nominate, but also to what kind of coalitions they are likely to pursue, what principles the parties appear willing to compromise on, and what governance arrangements are realistically sustainable.

The election will not only be about personalities. It will also be about the party’s incentives, our institutional stability, and public trust. In these, residents are not passive observers in this process.

Firstly, if you believe in a political organisation or its vision for Johannesburg, you would be well advised to actively participate and encourage others to do the same. Democracy functions best when citizens engage intentionally rather than withdrawing in frustration.

Secondly, and just as importantly, we should all participate in shaping the system itself. In this regard, the ongoing review of the White Paper on Local Government presents an important opportunity for South Africans to influence the future structure, powers, and functioning of municipalities. Long after posters come down, these institutional rules will continue shaping how our municipalities are governed, the extent to which they are able to deliver services, and how the interact with us, the residents.

Of course, who becomes Mayor matters, but the system within which they govern matters even more. The months ahead will produce plenty of noise, speculation, and political theatre.

Our task, as residents, is to remain focused on the deeper questions:

• What kind of cities do we want?

• What kind of governance will it require?

• And what role are we willing to play in building it?

What We Need You to Do

We, as BGI, are running a follow-up survey, for you to tell government exactly what you think (again). It should take you about fifteen minutes. For each chapter (and major theme) in the Reviewed Draft White Paper, we will show you:

• What our 2025 survey participants said they wanted

• What COGTA’s draft actually proposes

• Four options: you’re satisfied with the draft, you want the draft to go further, or you insist that government adopt what many of you originally asked for, or you are not sure.

The window is extremely short (our deadline is 27 May), but the survey is easy to follow and engage in, just like all our surveys. I ask that you please share this with anyone who cares about where their municipality is going, and let’s co-create the municipalities of our dreams.

If you have completed it already, thank you so much. If not, please go ahead and take it. Finally, if someone forwarded this to you and you’d like to receive future editions, go ahead and subscribe here: INSERT SUBSCRIBE

• Access the survey here, and Survey on Fixing Municipalities: 2026 White Paper on Local Government – Fill in form

• Access the link to the full Reviewed Draft White Paper here.

Alright, that’s it for today. Be back soon and, if no one else has told you, we love you.

SC

Find out more about the Better Governance Initiative NPC by visiting our website: www.bettergovernance.org.za. There you will find out everything about what BGI is all about, our policies, as well as how to get involved. Together, we’ve already shown what active citizens can achieve. Let’s continue building a stronger, more accountable democracy and equitable society together.

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A Better Governance Initiative Press Statement by Sabelo Chalufu, Founder & Director

Release: Immediate

Date: 19 May 2026

347 South Africans Changed the Future of Local Government For A Generation.

Add Your Voice. Tell Government What Changes You Want In Our Municipalities.

Note to Editors: A soundbite by Sabelo Chalufu is available here.

The Better Governance Initiative NPC (“BGI”) encourages residents to take action and fix our municipalities by submitting comments in the Review of the White Paper on Local Government.

Between June and July 2025, when the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs invited submissions for the review, we ran a plain-language public survey asking ordinary South Africans what they believed needed fixing in local government. Three hundred and forty-seven people responded and made themselves heard. We submitted every single response, unedited, to the COGTA Minister.

Five of the fourteen recommendation themes from those 347 responses appear in the revised White Paper. This is what constructive civic engagement looks like. Residents, engaging seriously with a complex policy process from an informed perspective, have produced meaningful and measurable policy change.

The draft Revised White Paper is now open for public comment until 28 May 2026, and BGI has launched a follow-up survey (available now) that gives every South African the opportunity to review what government proposes, compare it to what residents had originally asked for, and say whether they are satisfied.

The draft White Paper is not without its shortcomings. It declines to increase the equitable share (of the national budget) to municipalities, citing national fiscal constraints. Its consequence management proposals remain largely procedural, despite 90.8% of our respondents calling for real prosecutorial and punitive consequences. Its implementation mechanism, a Cabinet-mandated transition body, raises concerns about stakeholder input.

These are precisely the issues BGI’s submission seeks to address, and the weight of our submission depends on South Africans participating and making substantive inputs. There are many ways to shape our democracy and create the better society we aspire to. Participating in such processes is one such. BGI encourages you to play your part and inspire others to do the same.

The survey is available at https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/fQ6Nsyj7Ta. It takes approximately 15 minutes to complete. We intend to submit all responses to COGTA on 27 May 2026.

Issued By:

Sabelo Chalufu,

Founder & Director

For Enquiries:

BGI Communications

media@bettergovernance.org.za

About Us:

Better Governance Initiative NPC is an independent, non-partisan civic organisation working to help build a more capable, accountable and people-driven government in South Africa. We equip citizens with insights and tools to engage government, drive strategic advocacy, and strengthen public participation in governance processes. Our work bridges the gap between policy and lived experiences, helping people shape the systems that shape all our lives.

This newsletter is a product of the Better Governance Initiative NPC. We are committed to keeping it, and the rest of our civic education work, as widely accessible as possible. If you find it valuable and believe more people should see it, please partner with us and power our efforts by donating to fund our work. You can do so via our Back-A-Buddy Campaign available here or here: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/help-build-the-better-governance-initiative

[Back to Regular Programming]

Two years ago, when government announced it was reviewing the 1998 White Paper on Local Government (the founding document of our municipal system), most South Africans didn’t hear about it. Last year, when the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs rolled out the public participation process to gather public inputs into what the review’s White Paper would contain, the same issue arose.

This is the story of public participation in South Africa in one paragraph. Processes that are legally required, seldom accessible, and too often designed to be completed, rather than residents being heard, and their views incorporated into government policy.

I decided to do something about it, through this very newsletter, and using my social media platforms. I conducted a survey to collate inputs and share these with the Department on behalf of residents. Lo and behold, many of the 347 respondents in the survey said they had heard about the process on TikTok for the first time when they came across my content.

And, now, we’re back here again, with the reviewed white Paper out for Public comments. Except now, we have a growing organisation, the Better Governance Initiative NPC, of which this newsletter is a civic education and public participation instrument, and through which we are expanding our reach.

Let’s indulge.

What We Did

The Public Survey on Fixing Municipalities ran between June and July 2025, in plain language, online, open to anyone, and asked what you actually think needs fixing in local government. We collected 347 responses from across the country. We submitted every single one, unedited, to the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs in two batches. We also wrote to him directly, twice, summarising what you said.

The findings were not subtle. Far from it.

Nine out of ten respondents said consequence management (real consequences for corruption and misconduct) was the most urgent priority. Nearly as many said some form of merit-based appointments were non-negotiable. The overwhelming majority demanded that coalitions must be regulated, you wanted electoral reform, and an end to political interference in municipal administration.

We also documented something that rarely makes it into these submissions, the anger. Not vague frustration, but the specific, named anger of people who know exactly which people (administrators, politicians and service providers) are looting their municipality, who watch officials get suspended on full pay and return to the same posts, who have stopped believing that any of this nonsense will be finally stopped.

What Government Produced

A few weeks ago, the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs published the Reviewed Draft White Paper on Local Government in the Government Gazette, having take into consideration all submissions recevied. It is open for public comment until just before the end of this month. (I will not detain you with all 124 pages of it, but will share a link for you to read it at your leisure).

It is, in some parts, a very serious document. It names the problems, such as political interference, patronage appointments, coalition dysfunction, audit transgressions, and the collapse of public trust. On some issues, it goes further than we expected. For example, it proposes abolishing “political suitability” as a criterion for appointing Municipal Managers, and extending their contracts to up to ten years to insulate them from vagaries of the political cycles, as well as establishing a national councillor training system in law.

Yet, on others, it falls short. Far short. For example; it declines to increase the equitable share (of the national budget) to municipalities, saying the national fiscus cannot afford it. It proposes minimum competency requirements only for senior council leadership roles (not all candidates), citing constitutional constraints. Its consequence management proposals are largely procedural, as opposed to punitive. And its implementation mechanism (a Cabinet-mandated transition body) is, at its core, another government structure that government will have to hold itself accountable to.

What pleases me, however, is that five of the 14 recommendation themes from our previous submissions were accepted in their entirety, with the other nine being partially adopted.

What pleases me even more is that we, South Africans, get to have another say on what we think about all of this. We will do so, in our own words, on our own terms, again.

What We Need You to Do

We are running a follow-up survey, for you to tell government exactly what you think (again). It should take you about ten to fifteen minutes. For each chapter (and major theme) in the Reviewed Draft White Paper, we will show you:

• What our 2025 survey participants said they wanted;

• What COGTA’s draft actually proposes;

• Four answer options for you to select: you’re satisfied with the draft, you want the draft to go further, or you insist that government adopt what many of you originally asked for, or you are not sure; and

• Then, if thre is anything else you want to say, you will also have an opportunity to do so.

Your responses will form the basis of BGI’s submission to COGTA, making it much richer than before. COGTA’s deadline is 28 May 2026, so we will impose our own deadline of 26 May so we can collate everything and timeously make our submission on 27 May.

Just as we did with the original survey, and unlike other surveys we’ve done thereafter, this one will require your details as we are submitting on your behalf, with your express consent and proxy (though you are free to make your submission independently). From where we sit, this is how civic organisations are supposed to work. Not by us telling government what we think you want, but by aggregating what the public thinks and making sure it cannot be ignored by government decision-makers.

TAKE THE SURVEY

The window is extremely short, but the survey is easy to follow and engage in, just like all our surveys. I ask that you please share this with anyone who cares about where their municipality is going, and let’s co-create the municipalities of our dreams.

If someone forwarded this to you and you’d like to receive future editions, go ahead and subscribe here: INSERT SUBSCRIBE

• Access the survey here, and Survey on Fixing Municipalities: 2026 White Paper on Local Government – Fill in form

• Access the full Reviewed Draft White Paper here.

• Our previous newsletters on the original survey are littered throughout the newsletters between June, July and August.

Alright, that’s it for today. Be back soon and, if no one else has told you, we love you.

SC

Find out more about the Better Governance Initiative NPC by visiting our website: www.bettergovernance.org.za. There you will find out everything about what BGI is all about, our policies, as well as how to get involved. Together, we’ve already shown what active citizens can achieve. Let’s continue building a stronger, more accountable democracy and equitable society together.

Subscribe now

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A Better Governance Initiative Press Statement by Sabelo Chalufu, Founder & Director

Release: Immediate

Date: 08 May 2026

BGI Welcomes the Concourt Judgment on Parliament’s Handling of the Phala Phala Matter

Note to Editors: A soundbite by Sabelo Chalufu is available here.

The Better Governance Initiative NPC (“BGI”) welcomes today’s Constitutional Court judgment in the Phala Phala matter. The judgment, coming as it does on the 30^th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution, once more affirms the correct standard for the proper exercise of Parliament’s oversight responsibilities, accountability, and constitutional governance.

It is an indictment that Parliament has once again been found wanting in holding the Executive to account, particularly with respect to an incumbent Head of State. In the same way that the Fifth Parliament failed in its constitutional duties during the Nkandla matter involving former President Jacob Zuma, the Sixth Parliament has now also been found deficient in the Phala Phala matter involving his successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa.

We also note President Ramaphosa’s stated position, to the effect that no person is above the law and that allegations of wrongdoing must be subjected to due process without fear, favour, or prejudice. We therefore encourage the President to fully subject himself to Parliament’s processes in this matter, take the nation into his confidence therein, and enable the Republic to finally have closure on the issue.

BGI, therefore, calls on the Speaker of the National Assembly to expedite the relevant parliamentary processes, including the establishment of the Impeachment Committee, so that Parliament may fulfil its constitutional obligations without undue delay.

We further commend the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the African Transformation Movement (ATM) for approaching the Constitutional Court to challenge Parliament’s unlawful conduct. The parties’ action has helped reinforce the principle that Parliament must exercise its oversight responsibilities properly, in accordance with the law, and that this is most important in relation to the President of the Republic.

This process must not become another exercise in self-interested and partisan majoritarianism that subverts accountability and the rule of law. South Africans have repeatedly expressed their deep displeasure with such tendencies, including in denying any one party a governing majority in the 2024 elections. The Seventh Parliament owes South Africans fidelity to the Constitution, principled oversight, and leadership worthy of the Republic. Indeed, South Africans deserve better leadership.

Issued By:

Sabelo Chalufu,

Founder & Director

For Enquiries:

BGI Communications

media@bettergovernance.org.za

About Us:

Better Governance Initiative NPC is an independent, non-partisan civic organisation working to help build a more capable, accountable and people-driven government in South Africa. We equip citizens with insights and tools to engage government, drive strategic advocacy, and strengthen public participation in governance processes. Our work bridges the gap between policy and lived experiences, helping the people shape the systems that shape all our lives.

Subscribe now

Share

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A Better Governance Initiative Press Statement by Sabelo Chalufu, Founder & Director

Release: Immediate

Date: 30 April 2026

BGI Encourages Residents to Register to Vote to Fix Our Troubled Municipalities, Together.

Note to Editors: A soundbite by Sabelo Chalufu is available here.

The Better Governance Initiative NPC (BGI) welcomes President Ramaphosa’s announcement of 4 November 2026 as the date for South Africa’s next Local Government Elections. Our municipalities are in severe crisis, and many are failing to deliver on their core function of basic service delivery. Voting is one of the most direct ways we get to shape the kind of society we want. We encourage all South Africans to participate and to encourage others to do the same.

We remind voters that if you are not registered, you will not be able to vote. If you have moved since the last election, ensure you update your details now. You can also apply to vote via a Special Vote, especially those who can’t travel to the voting station on election day because of being physically infirm, disabled, pregnant, or you can’t vote at your voting station on election day.

These elections are about who governs your municipality, where you live, the sphere of government closest to your daily life. You will vote for:

• a ward councillor, who represents and serves your immediate community; and

• a political party to represent you in your municipal council.

We encourage South Africans to take their time to understand their municipalities, the current leadership, and the other parties contesting in their areas.

As a non-partisan organisation, we do not prescribe who to vote for. However, South Africans have been clear about what matters to them ahead of this election. In a recent survey of ours, participants identified the following as the key issues shaping their choices:

• Basic service delivery

• The cost of services

• Financial management and corruption

• Competent leadership

• Local economic opportunities

We encourage voters to assess their options against these priorities, as well as their values and ideology. These matters, too, as they influence how the issues are approached and resolved.

Finally, municipalities will not fix themselves. They require capable leadership and active citizens. We encourage those who are able and committed to public service to consider stepping forward as candidates. In this coalition era, leadership opportunities can emerge quickly and from unexpected places.

The time to prepare is now, and so is the opportunity. Even if you don’t care about politics, politics cares about you and will affect you either way. Get involved.

Check your details and register to vote at: registertovote.elections.org.za

Issued By:

Sabelo Chalufu,

Founder & Director

For Enquiries:

BGI Communications

media@bettergovernance.org.za

About Us:

Better Governance Initiative NPC is an independent, non-partisan civic organisation working to help build a more capable, accountable and people-driven government in South Africa. We equip citizens with insights and tools to engage government, drive strategic advocacy, and strengthen public participation in governance processes. Our work bridges the gap between policy and lived experiences, helping the people shape the systems that shape all our lives.

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[Ashor Sarupen, Solly Msimanga and Geording Hill-Lewis, newly-elected Federal Council Chairman, Federal Chairman, and Federal Leader of the Democratic Alliance. Photograph @/ Our_DA]

This newsletter is a product of the Better Governance Initiative NPC. We are committed to keeping it, and the rest of our civic education work, as widely accessible as possible. If you find it valuable and believe more people should see it, please partner with us and power our efforts by donating to fund our work. You can do so via our Back-A-Buddy Campaign available here or here: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/help-build-the-better-governance-initiative

[Back to Regular Programming]

Much of what goes on in our electoral politics, outside of the noise, can be explained in pretty simple terms. This is what I intend to do with this edition. Not to argue about whatever political party either you or I prefer, but to explain how much of our thinking about who we will likely vote for is shaped by the decisions taken many months before election day.

Every election cycle, we are flooded with slogans, promises, and campaign gimmicks. Parties launch manifestos, unveil mayoral candidates, and dominate headlines with messaging in support of their offer and against their opponents.

Beneath all of that, however, something far more consequential unfolds generally quietly, and largely unnoticed and uninterrupted: the National Budget! If we are serious about understanding what will shape the next local government election, we must start there.

Let’s indulge. (PS: It’s gonna be a long one.)

The Budget Decisions That Matter

In this year’s Budget, government has reduced the share received by local government from 9.7% to 9.4% of the total budget. That decision will have far greater consequences than any electoral campaign promise made over the next 9 - 11 months.

Further, they have chosen to continue their program of what they call “fiscal consolidation.” This is an exercise by which they, effectively, cut government spending on public goods and services for reasons which, as they would tell you, are about “stabilising debt and managing expenditure within our earnings.”

I’m not writing this to argue about the wisdom or otherwise of government’s chosen macro-economic policy, so much as I am doing so to demonstrate its impact on residents’ voting behaviour. In light of the upcoming election, I locate and demonstrate this in our municipalities, though the broader macro-economic policy also affects (and affirms) the overall point I make.

We all know that our municipalities are already under severe pressure. Our Infrastructure is failing, basic service delivery backlogs are growing, debt to other government service providers, such as Eskom and the water boards, is rising, whilst administrative capacity is uneven and often weak.

Against this backdrop, reducing predictable funding across the system tightens an already constrained system. These issues are the result of political economy choices by government, Parliament and the political parties that constitute both.

Municipal Failure: Funding and Governance

Our often very loud debate about municipalities is often framed extremely narrowly. We argue about corruption, mismanagement, and incompetence. These are real and serious problems, and I accept this fact, but they are not the full picture.

Municipal performance is shaped by two primary forces: the quality of governance and the adequacy of funding. Weak governance, therefore, can destroy a well-funded municipality, but inadequate funding can also overwhelm even a reasonably functioning one, especially where the local economy is small, unemployment is high, and the municipal revenue base is limited.

Bringing it back to the budget, then, we are faced with the reality that the budget, as it currently stands, reinforces pressure on both fronts. It constrains the fiscal space available to all municipalities while maintaining ever-increasing expectations of improved performance.

During the public hearings on the budget, we as BGI argued for a correction of this. We called for an increase in the local government equitable share from 9.4% to 10.9% of. That would’ve been about R30 billion increase for municipalities, though we were also clear that we weren’t married to the number. Parliament was free, if they agreed with us on the problem and solution, to determine any other number, as long as it resulted in a meaningful increase. Subscribers would recall that we took this number from a recent SALGA study, which determined that municipalities are spending a lot on functions assigned to provincial and national government, hampering core municipal service delivery.

A Narrative Advantage

Now for the part that will be uncomfortable for some, and exciting for others; the part where politics becomes important.

When municipalities fail, whether due to corruption, weak capacity, or funding constraints, the explanation that dominates public discourse is simple. It has become widely accepted that this is due to mismanagement, waste and theft. Whilst that narrative is extremely powerful politically, it is also incomplete.

You see, by limiting (or even ignoring) the role of funding in the public conversation, the debate becomes one-dimensional. It focuses on governance failures while ignoring structural fiscal constraints. (PS: I’m alive to the potential irony of a man who leads an organisation with the name “better governance” in its name seemingly downplaying the role of governance in political decisions. I’m not, but bear with me.)

This narrative creates a clear political advantage for a party that campaigns primarily on governance, efficiency and the ability to exact these in furtherance of desirable socio-economic outcomes. They are able to point to visible municipal failure and argue, “We would run this better. Just look at where we govern.”

I’m not arguing about whether, as fact, they do or do not. Instead, I’m arguing about how the current architecture of the budget, and its attendant consequences, reinforces a narrative that materially benefits them.

A Two-Speed Municipal Reality

Not all municipalities are created equally. Similarly, not all municipalities experience pressures equally. Better-resourced municipalities (those with stronger local economies and more stable revenue bases) are more resilient. They can absorb shocks, maintain infrastructure, and deliver services with greater consistency.

In contrast, poorer municipalities face a different reality. They have smaller tax bases, higher levels of poverty, greater dependence on national transfers and weaker administrative capacity. For them, reductions in the equitable share are consequential, not marginal.

Over time, this creates a two-speed system. Municipalities that are better able to stabilise and improve, and those that deteriorate further.

Thus, we argued to Parliament, a larger equitable share allocation is the rising tide that lifts all municipal ships, from the Metros to the most rural and poorer local municipality. Further, the adjustment we proposed was fiscally neutral, requiring no new aggregate expenditure, and this simply corrected and provided municipalities with the funding for the functions they are already performing, which are constitutionally assigned to national and provincial spheres.

That is to say, given that the municipalities are already subsidising the other spheres, exacerbating the service delivery crisis, Parliament can fix that in this budget by redirecting the money to them so they can actually do their job.

That divergence between municipalities that can deliver and those in danger is visible to you and me, and it shapes our political behaviour.

What You Are Telling Us

In February, we ran a short survey. We wanted to understand what you were thinking about municipalities right now. We probed whether you would vote, whether you might change your vote, which issues mattered most to you, and how you would decide your vote.

You were nothing if not clear about what matters to you: the overwhelming responses identified basic service delivery, financial management and corruption, as well as competent leadership. These are lived experiences, not abstract concerns. Then you also told us that you are increasingly willing to act on your frustrations and intend to change your voting behaviour or to punish incumbents.

You further said that you were intending to make the changes due to the parties you prefer having, in descending order: a record of delivery; your views on their skills, experience and qualifications; their ability to hold the administration to account; their understanding of community needs and, coming dead last, party affiliation.

And, so, Bahlali, what emerges is a picture with a critical link: budget decisions are shaping service delivery outcomes, and service delivery outcomes are shaping voter sentiment and intentions.

You would remember that we were also intentional about not asking you about political parties or in which municipalities you lived. Be that as it may, however, you also told us 68% of you lived in Metros, 29% in local municipalities, and 3% were unsure.

When we then did another survey ahead of our budget submission to Parliament, we asked where you are experiencing the service delivery crisis the most, and you told us it was in water outages, electricity disruptions, deteriorating roads, and inconsistent waste collection. In this survey, the majority of respondents were from Gauteng and predominantly lived in Metro municipalities.

This presents us with another link: the overwhelming majority of municipalities are ANC-led, with the DA dominating opposition. Further, Metro municipalities are where the DA receives its largest support, and outside of Cape Town, it remains the largest opposition in these municipalities. Finally, much of its campaign message is centred around what they style as their competence, and their ability to govern better, including insofar as financial management.

Therefore, if large swathes of Metro residents are intending to change their voting behaviour, punish the incumbents, and consider their vote through a lens borrowed from the DA, we can forecast a decline in ANC support and a simultaneous increase in DA proportional support (even if the absolute numbers do not increase).

Having said that, it doesn’t, however, necessarily mean the DA will be the beneficiary of the lost ANC votes. That is still to be determined by you.

The Political Cost of Fiscal Constraint

When governments decide to spend less on public goods and services, the political consequences are seldom neutral. Limited resources mean limited improvements in daily life. As the people enjoy less of the fruits of democracy, it breeds dissatisfaction, disengagement, and, in some cases, anger.

In a 2022 paper titled “The Political Cost of Austerity”, Ricardo Gabriel, Mathias Klein and Ana Pessoa tell us that the effects of this are predictable. They argue that some voters withdraw and do not participate in democratic processes, others will consolidate around parties they believe can deliver, and, most alarmingly, the rest will turn to more radical or disruptive alternatives.

This, Bahlali, is how the political landscape shifts. Not through TikTok gimmicks, but through lived experience over time. Don’t believe me? Look at our election results since 2014. As our voter turnout has decreased from a 1999 high of 89% to 56% in 2024, we have seen a rise in more disruptive and radical political parties (for better or worse). What’s more, turnout in municipal elections is generally much lower than in national and provincial elections, which tends to benefit opposition parties.

Why This Matters More Than Campaigns

Campaigns will come and go. I mean, we are in one every two and a half years. Parties will promise better services, cleaner governance, and stronger leadership. Some of those promises will be credible. Others will not. Indeed, they will even promise us about who they will and will not partner with, and then inevitably break these promises.

But all of these promises will operate within the same fiscal reality. If municipalities remain underfunded, the scope for meaningful improvement will be constrained, regardless of who governs.

That is why the Budget matters more than the campaign. It sets the conditions within which all political actors must operate. It is the most concrete expression of what the leaders have chosen to prioritise. Given that it is decided by Parliament, you can also ascribe all of its outcomes to all of the parties represented there.

The Choice We Are Making

The current approach reflects a particular balance: fiscal discipline at the national level, conditional reform at the municipal level and limited expansion of unconditional support.

There is both logic and risk to this. Without strengthening the fiscal position of municipalities (particularly through the equitable share), reform efforts may not translate into improved outcomes on the ground. The result is a system that is expected to perform for all of us, but is only being enabled to do so for some of us.

Finally, What Comes Next

The 2026 local government elections will not be decided by who has the best slogan or the most engaging visible campaign. These will be exciting and will capture our imagination. But, when all is said and done, the election will be shaped by: whether services improve or deteriorate, whether residents feel their lives are getting better or worse and whether trust in local government is restored or eroded

Those outcomes are being determined now in budget decisions, funding allocations, and policy design. The campaigns will simply interpret reality, but the Budget is creating tomorrow’s reality today. We made it through the first step in the Parliamentary process (getting our submission included in the Finance Committees’ report). Now we wait to see if the change we proposed is accepted in the second step (having the Division of Revenue Bill amended to increase the share to municipalities).

For us, then, the question is not so much who will win the next election. You will make that decision. This was an attempt to help you understand the building blocks of that decision. The question for us is about the extent to which the system we are building can deliver the outcomes that South Africans are demanding.

Bahlali, from where I sit, right now, the answer remains uncertain.

Alright, that’s it for today. Be back soon and, if no one else has told you, we love you.

SC

Find out more about the Better Governance Initiative NPC by visiting our website: www.bettergovernance.org.za. There you will find out everything about what BGI is all about, our policies, as well as how to get involved. Together, we’ve already shown what active citizens can achieve. Let’s continue building a stronger, more accountable democracy and equitable society together.

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This newsletter is a product of the Better Governance Initiative NPC. We are committed to keeping it, and the rest of our civic education work, as widely accessible as possible. If you find it valuable and believe more people should see it, please partner with us and power our efforts by donating to fund our work. You can do so via our Back-A-Buddy Campaign available here or here: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/help-build-the-better-governance-initiative

[Back to Regular Programming]

Bahlali, what an experience this last month has been. I write to you today to reflect on the journey thus far in getting our Municipal system to be better funded so it can be capacitated to resolve our service delivery crisis. I want to also set out why I believe that, obstacles notwithstanding, better is possible, and that we will get there before long.

On the 7^th of March, I wrote to our subscribers, asking you to come along as we prepared to file a submission in the 2026 Parliamentary Budget process. You responded in your numbers, totalling just under 200. And now, depending on what moves the Members of Parliament over the coming weeks, we may very well be on our way to amending the Budget, helping to fix the municipal funding and service delivery crisis.

Let’s indulge.

First, A Quick Recap

BGI filed a submission to Parliament calling for an increase in the local government's equitable share from 9.4% to 10.9% of nationally raised revenue. That is about R30 billion increase for municipalities, money that would go directly to the capacity of local government to deliver water, fix roads, keep the lights on, and simply service all of us better. I know, it’s an ambitious ask on any day, but in a climate where municipalities are also losing billions to theft and wastage? It is quite the tough ask.

Nevertheless, we asked for it not as a wish, but as an affirmation of a right. The Constitution requires Parliament to make an equitable division of revenue to the national, provincial and local spheres of government. What we submitted is that the current division does not meet that standard, that this undermines not only the constitutional directive, but also the capacity of municipalities to deliver to us what is due to us. And then we put numbers to it.

What followed were weeks of the most intensive civic advocacy BGI has undertaken to date. A public survey. A parliamentary submission. Letters to all 18 political parties represented in Parliament. An appearance before Parliament’s Joint Finance Committees. A response to National Treasury’s answers to our submission. An appearance before Parliament’s Standing Committee on Appropriations. Press Statements. Soundbites. And, as of the 19^th, a Committee report that names BGI, records our ask in full, and technically enables Parliament to properly consider it.

Our proposal (specific, quantified, constitutionally grounded) is now part of the formal parliamentary record and stands a chance of being realised.

Obstacles

For those who’ve read the Press Statements we’ve released, you would know the challenges that we ran into, but it is worth underscoring. If you did not, this will come in handy.

The most persistent obstacle was not the overt hostility one may ordinarily expect. Instead, it was deference. Deference to National Treasury’s leadership, to be precise.

I have always known, and have now personally experienced, that Parliament (or at least its Finance Committees) has a tendency to treat National Treasury’s advice as the outer boundary of what is possible. In response to our proposal, Treasury told Parliament, in very polite and diplomatic terms, that our proposal was premature and that any budget decision must wait for their Local Government Fiscal Framework Review, which is due in November at the earliest.

The committees, in adopting the Fiscal Framework and Revenue Proposals (which is the envelope within which budget decisions are made), largely accepted Treasury’s position (without requiring them to give a specific scenario analysis that we proposed, and without taking up Treasury’s own offer, made on the record on Friday 14 March, to supplement its responses and cover anything they had not answered directly.

This, Bahlali, is a real problem. Not because Treasury is wrong in principle (they are within their rights to make their principle position known) but because Parliament’s constitutional role is not to ratify Treasury’s preferences. Section 214 of the Constitution requires Parliament to make an equitable division of revenue. That is an active obligation, and it is Parliament’s exclusive power.

It requires that Parliament must engage the evidence of whatever is brought before it, test it against alternatives proposed, and make an informed decision. When Parliament defers that judgment to the Executive in the form of a Departmental review process that it does not control, it is postponing and deferring its obligation to the Executive.

Insofar as our submission is concerned, people living without reliable water and electricity cannot postpone their lives while Treasury’s review meanders through its units on Madiba Street.

Bizarrely, the Finance Committee’s report recorded that stakeholders had raised concerns about the adequacy of time and space for meaningful deliberation and engagement with the budget process. That is a significant admission. It is Parliament acknowledging, in its own voice, that the participation process has a serious problem. Our experience of this process is consistent with that finding. We placed a specific, evidence-based proposal before Parliament. We asked for a specific analytical response so Parliament could discharge its Constitutional mandate properly, and we did not get one.

The Fiscal Framework was adopted without it. To my mind, that gap creates real legal vulnerability that Parliament has been severely criticised by the courts several times. More importantly, it leaves unresolved a question that Parliament itself has now flagged as unresolved.

Here is the crisp point: a public participation process that acknowledges receipt without engaging substance is not yet meaningful participation.

The Possibilities

Having said all of that, the case is not closed. In fact, it is very much alive.

The Standing Committees on Appropriations have already engaged our submission. They are the ones who will make the important decision about whether or not to make the budget amendment we have proposed and inform the two Houses of Parliament.

Members of that committee are applying their minds to the modalities of our proposal, whether or not they find it desirable and, if so, what it would take, mechanically, to give municipalities more. We will keep engaging the relevant decision-makers because the decisions that matter over the next few weeks are political ones, and the people who make them need to hear from us directly.

As I say, the Appropriations Committees have the authority to recommend the proposed amendments to the division of revenue. If Parliament agrees with our proposal (that municipalities need more, that the correction is achievable, that the constitutional obligation demands it), Appropriations is the place where that agreement becomes consequential. We will keep a close eye on this and keep fighting to make sure that our position is properly understood when those decisions are made.

I must pause to mention something I found interesting. Last week, ahead of the new month and in response to the inevitable shock to the fuel price as a result of the war of aggression against Iran, National Treasury found R6 billion to give South Africans relief at the fuel pumps.

This is a welcome development, including insofar as our proposal is concerned. Why? Because it validated our argument, specifically that the amendment of the budget by increasing the allocation to municipalities is possible and can be done safely and within the current Framework as adopted by Parliament, by way of a fiscally neutral reallocation.

And now for the part I want to say the most.

Creating A Better Tomorrow

What we have done over the past four weeks is the Art of the Possible. We are a small organisation. A new organisation. We do not have the resources of established think tanks or the political weight of decades-old trade unions. However, what we do have is dynamic and game-changing.

We have a clarity of argument, a commitment to evidence, and the conviction that civic participation (done rigorously and persistently) can move mountains. We have demonstrated this before this campaign. And it has already moved things. Our name and our proposals are in Parliament’s records forever. Our numbers and evidence are on the record. Our constitutional argument has been heard. None of that existed before we started.

Is it enough? Not yet. The crisis in municipalities is real and it is deepening. The people who are living it, all of us, cannot wait for the arc of advocacy to bend at its own pace. I know that more than you can believe.

But I also know that the record we have built in Parliament, in public, in the formal documents of this budget process, will not disappear when this cycle ends, whatever the final outcome is. It is now the foundation for the next argument we will make, at the appropriate forum. And the one after that.

I have not a single doubt in my mind; we can create better, together. What’s more, one day, that better will emerge. We just have to keep at it.

I am truly grateful. We, BGI, are grateful, genuinely, for everyone who has been part of this campaign. The 198 people who completed our survey. Our volunteers. The readers and subscribers of this newsletter. The Committee Secretaries who made space for us. The Members of Parliament who engaged our submission seriously. And the ones who challenged us, because being challenged is how an argument is strengthened.

Watch this space.

PS: Our update on the survey will be delivered in the coming days.

Alright, that’s it for today. Be back soon and, if no one else has told you, we love you.

SC

Find out more about the Better Governance Initiative NPC by visiting our website: www.bettergovernance.org.za. There you will find out everything about what BGI is all about, our policies, as well as how to get involved.

This is just the beginning, Mhlali. Together, we’ve already shown what active citizens can achieve. Now let’s take the next step and build a stronger, more accountable democracy and equitable society together.

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A Better Governance Initiative Press Statement by Sabelo Chalufu, Founder & Director

Release: Immediate

Date: 18 March 2026

BGI Welcomes Parliamentary Acknowledgement of Inadequate Municipal Funds In The 2026 Budget And Highlights Vulnerability of Committee Decision On Fiscal Framework

Note to Editors: A soundbite by Sabelo Chalufu is available here.

The Better Governance Initiative NPC (BGI) notes today’s decisions of the Joint Standing and Select Committees on Finance to adopt the 2026 Fiscal Framework & Revenue Proposals, a critical step in the Budget process.

We welcome the fact that the Committees’ have recorded that local government’s equitable share in the budget is inadequate, as this was part of what BGI had proposed for Parliament to consider. This is a meaningful step. We further note that our primary proposal, that Parliament amend the budget by raising this share from 9.4% to 10.9%, is contained in the Committees’ final draft reports but has not been agreed to at this stage.

Our fight is not over. Our specific, evidence-based proposal has entered the Parliamentary record and proceeds to the next stage of the budget process, to the Appropriations Committees.

However, BGI also records a serious concern about what the process did not do. Our submission placed before the Finance Committees a specific, quantified proposal for a net-neutral reallocation of funds within the existing fiscal envelope, under which national and provincial spheres would end at or above their 2025/26 revised estimates.

We specifically asked the Committees to request that National Treasury provide an analysis of that specific scenario before they deliberate on the Fiscal Framework, noting that National Treasury had indicated on the record in the Joint Meeting of Friday 13 March that it would be keen to supplement its responses on matters arising. The Committees appear not to have taken up that undertaking. This net-neutral scenario was not engaged in the Committees’ draft final reports.

Instead, the Committees recorded Treasury’s general defences of the status quo, without testing them against BGI’s specific counterarguments. The Committees have adopted the Fiscal Framework without the analysis that BGI formally recorded as necessary to make an informed decision.

The Committees’ own reports record that civil society stakeholders raised concerns about the adequacy of time and space for meaningful deliberation within Parliament’s process. Our experience of this process is consistent with that finding. A public participation process that receives a specific, evidenced, constitutionally grounded proposal, and engages the proposing organisation by name, but then returns a report that records Treasury’s defences without engaging the substance of the proposal, raises a serious question: to what extent, if at all, was the participation meaningful in the constitutional or procedural sense?

The Constitution does not require Parliament to agree with every submission it receives. BGI does not demand that either. However, it does require Parliament to genuinely grapple with what it receives. We view the Committees’ failure to require Treasury’s consequence analysis on an element that goes to the heart of their decisions on the Fiscal Framework as falling short of that standard.

As a result, our view is that this creates a legal vulnerability for their decisions on the Framework decision and subsequent budgetary decisions. A decision made by Parliament in the exercise of public power is subject to the requirement of lawfulness, reasonableness and procedural fairness. Where a specific, constitutionally grounded submission has been received by an Organ of State in a public process, another Organ of State is responsible for empowering the latter with critical information that goes to the heart of the decision to be made, but does not provide it, the subsequent decision is vulnerable to legal challenge.

In light of where the process is right now, the Appropriations Committees can still require Treasury to provide the consequence analysis. Doing so would strengthen the legal foundation of Parliament’s ultimate decision on the Division of Revenue Bill, where our proposal finds the most practical expression.

Our proposal remains alive. The Standing Committee on Appropriations in the National Assembly has already engaged BGI’s submission yesterday, and members of that Committee have applied their minds to the modalities of BGI’s proposal. The Select Committee on Appropriations in the National Council of Provinces meets next Tuesday.

We will be engaging both committees, continuing our advocacy on the issue, as we stand by our recommendations in full. The service delivery and funding crisis in municipalities is deepening now. Parliament still has the authority and the opportunity to act, and we say they should.

Issued By:

Sabelo Chalufu,

Founder & Director

For Enquiries:

BGI Communications

media@bettergovernance.org.za

About Us:

Better Governance Initiative NPC is an independent, non-partisan civic organisation working to help build a more capable, accountable and people-driven government in South Africa. We equip citizens with insights and tools to engage government, drive strategic advocacy, and strengthen public participation in governance processes. Our work bridges the gap between policy and lived experiences, helping the people shape the systems that shape all our lives.

Note to Editors: A soundbite by Sabelo Chalufu is available here.

The Better Governance Initiative NPC (“BGI”) tonight appeared before the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Appropriations, where we continued our advocacy calling on Parliament to fix the service delivery crisis by fixing the municipal funding crisis in the ongoing budget process.

We appreciate the Committee’s robust engagement and note that, critically, many of the Members share our concern about the dual crisis. It is especially noteworthy that Members are applying their minds on what is to be done to resolve the crisis, including by considering the modalities of our proposal.

Tonight, we reminded the Committee that the service delivery and funding crisis in municipalities is deepening now, and that Parliament has the authority and responsibility, as the people’s representatives, to provide the necessary funding to fix it.

In our proposal on the 2026/27 Budget, BGI has asked that Parliament increase the funds allocated to municipalities from the current 9.4% of the budget to 10.9% (or the maximum amount achievable via a net-neutral reallocation of funds within the proposed budget). Our proposal doesn’t ask for new money, but says that the budget can be reworked in such a way that the share to municipalities increases and national and provincial spheres end at or above their 2025/26 revised estimates.

Further, whilst we support COGTA’s Review of the White Paper on Local Government and National Treasury’s Review of the Local Government Funding Model, these will not provide relief in the short-term, whereas Parliament can make the desirable changes to fix the crisis in this budget process.

We also highlighted that the Appropriations Committee’s ability to make significant changes to the proposed budget may be constrained by the decision of the Finance Committees on the Fiscal Framework. The point being that if Parliament agrees with our proposal, but prefers to realise it by increasing Revenue, only the Finance Committees are empowered to make the necessary changes to the Fiscal Framework. The Appropriations Committees are then constrained by that decision. We recorded that, last Friday, at the meeting of the Joint Finance Committees, National Treasury had omitted a specific response on the permutations of our specific proposal, which would enable Parliament to make an informed decision on what to do with the Fiscal Framework and any consequent decisions.

Issued By:

Sabelo Chalufu,

Founder & Director

For Enquiries:

BGI Communications

media@bettergovernance.org.za

About Us:

Better Governance Initiative NPC is an independent, non-partisan civic organisation working to help build a more capable, accountable and people-driven government in South Africa. We equip citizens with insights and tools to engage government, drive strategic advocacy, and strengthen public participation in governance processes. Our work bridges the gap between policy and lived experiences, helping the people shape the systems that shape all our lives.