Fixing local government starts by admitting the system is broken

• South Africa can’t “recover” municipalities that never had the capability to function properly in the first place.
• The real crisis is weak leadership, broken institutions and towns with no economic base.
• Fixing local government starts with execution, not more policy, plans or speeches.

Fixing the system

Every January, the same promise is made. This year’s ANC “January 8 statement” again put fixing local government at the top of the national agenda. President Cyril Ramaphosa has said it before. He will likely say it again. By now, the issue is no longer political will. It is whether the system actually knows how to fix itself.

After working with more than 50 municipalities over the past two decades, one reality is impossible to ignore: South Africa keeps trying to rescue a system that never built the basic capability to work properly in the first place.

You cannot recover what was never functional.

There is no recovery without capability

‍Government talks a lot about recovery and sustainability. These are important goals, but they sit at the top of the pyramid, not the bottom. At Ntiyiso, we work with the Resilience Strategy Hierarchy developed by Dr Louis van der Merwe, which shows that stability and growth only become possible once a municipality has basic operational capability.

That means asking uncomfortable questions:

• Do the right people exist in the right roles?
• Are financial controls actually working?
• Can the institution deliver water, electricity, roads and planning with the systems it has?

If the answer is no, then recovery plans, turnaround strategies and long-term visions are simply premature. You cannot stabilise what does not function. And you cannot grow what cannot first perform its core duties.

What we see repeatedly is municipalities being pushed to “recover” from crises they were never equipped to manage. That is not just a leadership problem. It is a structural failure.

The three real root causes

‍Through our submission to the review of the 1998 White Paper on Local Government, three systemic issues stand out.

First: A capability deficit.
Strategy, leadership and service delivery are all weak, often at the same time. Integrated Development Plans become box-ticking exercises instead of real financial and spatial strategies.

Political and administrative leadership pull in different directions. Technical, engineering and financial skills are scarce, overstretched or simply absent.

Second: Institutional misalignment.
Municipalities are structured for a world that no longer exists. Populations have doubled or tripled, but organograms and operating models remain frozen in time. Finance departments are sometimes run by interns. Engineering units cannot retain professionals. The institution is outdated, but the demand on it keeps rising.

Third: Scale and economic reality.
South Africa has too many municipalities with no viable economic base. They cannot sustain themselves but still carry full political and administrative overheads. Skills are spread too thinly, costs are duplicated, and dependency on national transfers becomes permanent.

Until these three issues are confronted, no amount of policy reform or political speeches will deliver change.

Policy is not the problem. Execution is.

‍South Africa is not short of strategies, frameworks or legislation. What it lacks is the institutional muscle to implement them properly.

Local government reform has become overly academic. Models are drawn. Conferences are held. Papers are written. Meanwhile, water leaks, electricity fails, roads crumble and public trust evaporates.

Real change does not come from theory alone. It comes from rolling up sleeves: fixing billing systems, restoring financial controls, restructuring governance, stabilising service delivery and developing leaders who can actually execute.

Theory matters. But theory without application does not keep the lights on.

What must happen now

‍If the country is serious about fixing local government, reform must start at the bottom of the hierarchy, not the top:

• Honest capability assessments across leadership, finance and service delivery
• Institutional restructuring aligned to population size and economic reality
• Intensive capacity-building in engineering, planning, finance and governance
• Practical recovery plans with timelines, accountability and consequences

These are not abstract ideas. They are interventions that have been tested in the field.

This cannot be government talking to itself

‍Local government will not be fixed in isolation. Business, civil society, development finance institutions and experienced practitioners all have a role to play.

Communities already step in when the state fails, directing traffic, organising water deliveries, protecting infrastructure. That energy must be organised, not left to permanent crisis management.

The review of the White Paper on Local Government is a rare chance to reset the system. But if government continues to talk about recovery without first fixing capability, next January’s speech will sound exactly like this year’s.

Local government does not need more declarations.
It needs fewer, stronger municipalities.
Clearer powers.
Capable institutions.
And people who know how to execute.

Everything else is noise.

The author of this article is Miyelani Holeni, Chief Adviser, Ntiyiso Consulting Group

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