Cosatu general secretary Zingiswa Losi urges workers to support the ANC and SACP in the 2026 local government elections, while calling for urgent action on municipal debt, corruption, skills shortages and failing services.Picture: File picture
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and workers across South Africa keenly await our local government elections, our most contested since 1994.
It is no exaggeration to state that much is at stake in these, from municipal workers correctly expecting to be paid on time to working-class communities needing basic services to businesses requiring modern infrastructure.
Society is legitimately frustrated by the state of many municipalities, but we should equally not forget the massive strides we have made since 1994 under successive African National Congress (ANC) led administrations to transform society for the better.
Before 1994, a third of South African households had electricity and half had access to water and sanitation. Today it is more than 90%.
Similar outstanding success stories can be seen with the expanding network of paved roads, clinics and other essential social and economic infrastructure.
These have played an important role in dismantling apartheid’s legacies, opening access to the economy for all and tackling poverty and inequality. These are no small achievements.
Whilst we applaud these massive gains, we must be equally concerned and pained by the cancers of state capture and corruption in many municipalities that have become a national shame.
The number of municipalities experiencing financial distress has jumped from 10% to over 60% in the past decade.
Up to three dozen municipalities struggle to pay staff salaries.
Many have severely neglected their infrastructure causing some companies to close and retrench workers.
These were once challenges afflicting rural communities, today they have become a crisis for our cities.
The Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement tabled at Parliament provides several important interventions, in particular R28 billion to rebuild metropolitan municipalities’ billing capacities, R60 billion water infrastructure investments and R21 billion to ensure indigent households receive their free basic services.
Whilst these are welcome interventions, they are not enough to stablise and rebuild increasingly embattled municipalities.
Key to fixing local government is tackling the municipal debt crisis with monies owed by residents, businesses and even the state to municipalities exceeding R485 billion and subsequently their owing Eskom over R120 billion and similarly alarming debts to water boards.
Given our dire national crises of weak 1% economic growth and 43.8% unemployment, we do not have the luxury of time.
Our new Councillors must hit the ground running and deal with the key burning challenges.
The Municipal Finance Management Act requires municipalities to pay service providers within 30 days.
This must be honoured at all times.
The Basic Conditions of Employment Act compels all employers to pay their staff in full and on time without fail, including their pensions, medical aids and taxes.
The days of this not happening must now end without exception.
The ANC and the South African Communist Party’s elections manifestos speak to insourcing municipal functions and integrating Expanded Public and Community Works’ Programmes’ workers into their respective municipalities.
These are key to removing the pandemic of state capture and corruption from local government, to saving scarce funds otherwise diverted to tenderpreneurs’ need for profit, and to promoting decent work not cheap labour.
It is precisely for these and other progressive commitments that will advance working class struggles that Cosatu urges its members and all workers to vote for the ANC and SACP on the 4th.
Political parties must deploy their best and not their weakest to run local government and when their deployees fail, they must be removed swiftly. Councils must invest in and require Councillors to undergo continuous training, including acquiring matric certificates and tertiary qualifications.
Municipal managers must be appointed based upon their skills, qualifications and experience.
We cannot have senior management in charge of complex matters ranging from finance to engineering services lacking the relevant skills and qualifications.
The Department of Cooperative Governance (DCOG) must ensure this happens without exception.
The Special Investigations Unit and the National Prosecuting Authority with the assistance of the Police and the Auditor-General must be tasked to weed out corrupt and criminal elements from local government. This has to include lifestyle audits of Councillors and management by the SIU and the South African Revenue Service.
Treasury and DCOG must expedite the retabling of the Public Procurement Act plus overhaul and put in place transparent, online municipal procurement systems to end the wild west that is local government procurement.
Interventions by Treasury to rebuild municipal billing capacity must be extended to all municipalities, in particular the most indebted and dysfunctional. Legislation must be amended to ringfence water, sanitation and electricity revenue for those core functions’ infrastructure maintenance.
This will require a new municipal funding model be put in place to ensure municipalities, in particular those lacking a self-sufficient rates base, are provided with adequate financing to fulfill their constitutional obligations.
A discussion needs to take place on the sustainable number of municipalities and which of the 257 should be integrated.
Eskom, SANRAL, the Department of Water and Sanitation and water boards must be enlisted to help rebuild municipal capacity to deliver and maintain electricity, water, sanitation and roads. Where municipalities cannot manage such capacity in the long-term, then these institutions should permanently take over these functions.
Constitutional and legislative amendments are needed to enable national government to act swiftly and timeously when municipalities fall foul of the law or experience severe challenges.
This needs to be accompanied by early warning systems to enable such interventions to be proactive and not merely reactive, by which stage the rot is often too deep.
Parliament, in particular the National Council of Provinces, and the Provincial Legislatures need to drastically ramp up their respective scrutiny of local government and hold delinquent municipalities accountable.
Whilst the challenges facing local government are daunting, they must be fixed.
This is key to saving and creating decent jobs, to unlocking economic opportunities and growth, and to delivering a better life for all, in particular the poor and the working class.
South Africa has shown that it can overcome often insurmountable odds, we must do it once again.