While the recent assessment of KwaZulu-Natal municipalities by a joint parliamentary committee is welcome, it must not end like many similar visits before it — with a report that lists problems but leads to little change. What mayors told the committee is what residents already know. Infrastructure is crumbling, governance systems are weak and councils are operating with limited resources.
From water losses to financial instability, the diagnosis was familiar and thorough. What remains missing, however, is accountability. As in previous oversight exercises, the presentations stopped short of addressing the key question facing communities: who is responsible for the deep dysfunction that has taken root in local government?
Without that answer, oversight becomes repetition rather than reform. Infrastructure does age, but neglect is a choice. The real issue is why, for years, essential assets have not been replaced or properly maintained.
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Instead, deterioration has continued, maintenance has been postponed and financial controls have weakened. In municipalities such as Msunduzi, millions of rand are lost each year through water leakages, weakening already fragile revenue. These losses are not accidents.
They are the predictable result of poor planning, weak leadership and ineffective systems. Municipal collapse does not happen suddenly. It grows from years of inadequate planning, politicised appointments and the steady loss of technical skills.
The committee must avoid focusing only on symptoms while ignoring the people and decisions that enable failure. MPs have heard these explanations many times before. If oversight is to matter, it must go further.
Clear lines of responsibility must be set, timelines enforced and consequences applied where failure continues. Provincial and national governments also cannot keep stepping in only when crises explode, while avoiding hard political choices. KwaZulu-Natal’s municipal crisis is no longer about identifying problems. It is about facing the reasons they have been allowed to continue — and ensuring those responsible are held to account.
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