Even the top performing municipalities in South Africa are not consistent in spending money that is already physically given to them for capital projects.
Poor performance by municipalities belies the fact that for more than 150 years project management and engineering have been core skills in RSA with world class universities focusing on those disciplines including UCT, US, UWC, CPUT, WITS, UP, UKZN, UJ and many more.
No single municipality in South Africa has consistently achieved a 100% full expenditure rate across every consecutive financial year between 2021 and 2026 for both total capital budgets and all conditional grants.
At the same time about 66% of South African municipalities have been able to spend their fully funded capital budgets while struggling to meet the quality standards and also failing to meet accounting and audit standards – 63% of RSA municipalities are financially distressed or financially non-compliant.
Voters have to look at what at the root causes municipalities to fail to fully spend funded budgets with money in hand, and clearly demarcated projects to be done at municipal and ward level within allocated timeframes? Why does this unfortunate tendency keep repeating itself and the same parties implicated continue to get the larger portion of the municipal vote?
The National Planning Commission shows that the entire municipal sector has failed to meet NDP targets in the period 2021 to 2026. The NDP and the Constitution both have chapters strictly focused on the municipal sector. Part of the yearly IDP and Budget planning of municipalities is the creation of a Ward-based IDP which is declared credible by COGTA and Provincial Treasury.
A credible IDP is realistic because it is fully funded and the skills and capability to fully implement it are in place. This credible IDP has not helped our municipalities because in general terms there is no political will, gumption, and adroitness to fully implement the credible IDP across the municipal sector.
It must be clear that the culture of mediocrity is entrenched especially when we measure performance against the NDP rather than against the other failing municipalities. One example of this mediocrity is that the City of Town averages between 1% and 2% local GDP growth rate versus the NDP stipulated 5.4%. Even during the 2004-2008 economic boom in RSA Cape Town never went significantly beyond 4% while Tshwane, Joburg and eThekwini did.
Cape Town is often touted as the gold standard of municipal performance, but not only has it failed to grow the GDP adequately and competitively but has decisively moved away from the NDP stipulated 5% unemployment.
Cape Town posts 21.9% unemployment rate in 2026. According to an analysis citing data from the Bureau for Economic Research (BER), the Western Cape has seen its unemployment rate quadruple since 1994, which is a faster rate of increase than any other province from 5% to the current 21.9%.
The governance of the DA since 2006 has not helped nor changed this picture. Mayors and councillors across the board need to go back to the glory days and higher standards of superior municipal performance. During this boom period Tshwane, Joburg and eThekwini were clear leaders and Cape Town was fourth , in reality all of the eight top performing municipalities were not mining towns. More importantly the ANC was still able at that time to field high performing mayors and municipal managers. The rankings below speak volumes.
Voters must remember very well that within living memory they elected high performing mayors and worked with competent councillors and municipal managers and this culture must start to return. In simple terms Tshwane must return to prosperity for the city as a whole, not tenderpreneurs , mafia and corrupt councillors. The calibre that pro-duced these results were Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, Gwen Ramakgopa, Amos Masondo, Duma Nkosi, Ntombi Mekgwe, Obed Mlaba, Nomaindia Mfeketo, Helen Zille, Dan Plato, Sindisile Maclean, Ntobentle Peter, Itumeleng Kotsoane, Playfair Marule.
Voters must trigger and sustain a renaissance in the municipal sector. The indicators used in this evaluation have not yet been surpassed since 2008, instead a clear decline has become the norm. High performance is a matter of daily habits and a culture of ambition and diligence.
Voters need to quantify what it is that we have lost and then evaluate all candidates based on the work that must be done to fully recover our previous glory and excellence. Starting with International Financial Centre Status in the period 2004- 2008, Joburg was the undisputed International centre and hub of Africa. In the period 2021-2026 that status has been fully taken by Casablanca in Morocco which is now the most industrialised nation in Africa.
Today the Top International Financial Centres are Casablanca, Mauritius and Kigali, Joburg and Cape Town and number six is Nairobi. South Africa is nowhere near number one.
Port efficiency is another area of major concern and interest. In the period 2004-2011 Durban and Cape Town Ports functioned reliably and predictably and coped well with the surges of cargo occasioned by the 2022 Fifa World cup.
In the period 2021 to 2026 Durban is now ranked last in the world 403 out of 403 and Cape Town third from the bottom at number 400, in terms of Container Port Performance Index (CPPI 2024).
City cleanliness and safety is another area where excellence has been abandoned in favour of ghettoised cities and smaller towns across all of South Africa. Joburg, Cape Town and Durban had managed to create Fifa standard cleanliness and safety. Today only Cape Town has largely maintained that standard regardless of mushrooming squatter camps in the CBD and simmering land invasions across the city.
Cape Town has failed to clean and calm the black townships along the N2 highway from the current Cape Town International Airport to the CBD. Again, there is no clear regulated, subsidised and scheduled mass transport in all our major cities, for workers, residents and tourists that is safe across the board in South Africa.
So, the failure to provide enough infrastructure must be addressed in the context of capital budgets that are not spent and returned to the National Treasury rather than talking about shortage of money or austerity or problems with the funding model.
Credible infrastructure plans align with StatsSA population growth pro-jections, and the capital grants and budgets are sensitive to population growth.
The National Treasury stipulates that all municipalities must budget 8% of the value of their infrastructure for planned and unplanned maintenance.
In reality the overwhelming majority of our municipalities budget about 2 to 4 percent, predictable they can never maintain existing infrastructure on that basis.
That means even if you have diligent workers, you will not get the job done. There is a need to budget fully for all planned and unplanned maintenance and all kinds of quality and health inspectors.
Today we have about 27% of the health inspectors. Backlogs of infrastructure and building inspectors are unclear, but the impact is devastating. Joburg only has about 50% of building and infrastructure inspectors which means much of the buildings and infrastructure will at best be inspected once every 10 to 15 years, and that creates rampant noncompliance. Most of our municipalities do not have registered engineers qualified to sign off on complex structures. South Africa itself now has a 90% deficit of engineers compared to OECD countries.
Voters therefore have to insist that known solutions are fully implemented especially where we have a previous track-record of high achievement.
Every rand must do its job and every post in the municipality must be occupied only by the correctly qualified person whatever it takes to do that.
Political party loyalty never confers competence on anyone, and citizens themselves must insist on this, even if it means giving up undeserved salaries and benefits.
The period we have entered now is one where, upfront, the progress we want to achieve as a ward and a city must be quantified and corresponding skills and professional ethics clearly articulated and enforced. We must move beyond voting novices into power. Sandile Swana is a principal consultant at the Centre for Strategic Leadership and a member of the 70s Group.