The ANC Has Failed South Africa's Cities. Now Make It Pay.

Somewhere in Soweto, Tembisa, or Mamelodi this week, a mother will fill a plastic drum from a tanker truck because her tap has been dry for days. Her children will step over bags of uncollected rubbish on the way to school. And when she goes to the polls, she will be asked to trust the same party that has presided over that dry tap and that rubbish for a generation.

South Africans are about to vote in local elections that will decide who controls the country's biggest cities. These are not abstract contests. The councillors elected this week will choose the mayors who run water, sanitation, and refuse collection, the services that decide whether a family lives with dignity or lives in the dirt. Ask yourself a simple question. Who is responsible when the water stops?

Let us be precise about the scale of the failure. The African National Congress lost its parliamentary majority in the 2024 national elections, falling to roughly 40 percent of the vote after three decades of dominance. It was forced into a unity government with the Democratic Alliance and smaller parties, a coalition built not on a shared vision but on the arithmetic of survival. In the last municipal elections, in 2021, the ANC lost control of several major metros, and it now governs many others only through fragile coalitions that trade patronage for power. A party that once carried the moral weight of liberation now clings to city halls the way a drowning man clings to driftwood.

The numbers behind that decline are not rhetorical. South Africa records roughly 27,000 murders a year, one of the highest counts in the world outside active war zones. Official unemployment sits near a third of the labour force, and if you count those who have given up looking, the figure climbs far higher. Among young South Africans, the picture is worse still. Two in three young people who should be entering the workforce are sitting at home, and a generation is watching its future being quietly confiscated. Meanwhile, the Zondo Commission's findings on state capture, the systematic looting of public institutions such as Eskom and Transnet, laid bare how public money was siphoned into private pockets while the lights went out and the trains stopped running.

Now politicians are campaigning on illegal immigration, and we must address this with clear eyes. Yes, borders must be controlled. A state that cannot enforce its own laws is a state that cannot protect its citizens. But anyone who tells you that migrants from Zimbabwe, Malawi, or Mozambique are the reason your water is undrinkable is either lying or has not been paying attention. Those migrants are, in many cases, cleaning the same houses and staffing the same clinics that the state has failed to fund. The vigilante groups that have terrorised foreign-owned shops and displaced foreign workers in recent years are not patriots. They are the local face of the same rot. Scapegoating the vulnerable is what failing governments do when they run out of answers. Do not let them sell it to you as a policy.

South Africa has the bones of a serious country. It has an independent judiciary that has, at times, sent former presidents and their allies to face scrutiny. It has a Constitution that many of us once thought was the finest in Africa. It has a press that still asks uncomfortable questions and a civil society that still turns out in the streets. These are not gifts from the ruling party. They are the hard-won inheritance of people who fought for them, and the ANC has spent years eroding them through patronage, cadre deployment, and institutional capture. Every time a municipal manager is appointed for loyalty rather than competence, the citizen pays. Every time a tender is awarded to a politically connected firm, a water pipe goes unfixed.

Look instead at the countries across our continent that have chosen a better path. Botswana, for decades, managed its diamond wealth through transparent institutions, a professional civil service, and a culture of accountability that turned a poor land-locked country into one of Africa's most stable economies. Mauritius built a reputation for good governance, low corruption, and an open economy that treats property rights and contract enforcement as sacred. Senegal, in its recent democratic transitions, showed that ordinary citizens who refuse to be cowed can force a peaceful change of power at the ballot box. These are not perfect places. But they prove that competent, accountable government is achievable in Africa, and they set the minimum standard that South African cities should be measured against.

So what must change? First, municipalities need to be run by people chosen for competence, with audited tender processes, published contracts, and independent oversight that cannot be bought. Second, the water and electricity utilities must be reformed so that maintenance is funded, leaks are fixed, and metered billing is enforced against the big defaulters who have treated public utilities as a private piggy bank. Third, the rule of law must be applied equally, whether the suspect is a councillor, a tender broker, or a gang boss in a township. Fourth, the private sector should be invited in through transparent public-private partnerships, with clear rules that protect property rights and attract investment rather than handing contracts to cronies. Free markets and strong institutions are not enemies of the poor. They are the only proven tools for lifting them out of poverty.

And you, the voter, have a role that no coalition deal can take from you. Before you put your mark on that ballot, ask every candidate three questions. What is your plan to fix the water in my ward? Who will you hold accountable for the tender scandals that drained this city dry? And how will you protect the rights of every resident, citizen or migrant, while enforcing the law? If a candidate cannot answer those questions with specifics, with timelines, and with names, they are asking for your vote without deserving it.

We are Africans. This is our continent, our cities, and our future. The ANC built its legacy on the courage of people who refused to accept oppression. Today's leaders are asking us to accept mediocrity and theft as the price of loyalty. We should not accept it. Vote with the same courage that ended apartheid, and demand that those who run our cities deliver clean water, safe streets, and honest government, or be replaced by those who will.

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL