The historic university town collapsing in front of everyone’s eyes

The historic town of Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown) is falling apart due to years of poor management under the Makana Local Municipality, with frequent water outages and deteriorating road infrastructure.

Located in the Eastern Cape, Makhanda is home to some of South Africa’s top-rated schools, including St Andrew’s Prep, St Andrew’s College, the Diocesan School for Girls, and Kingswood College.

It is also the home of Rhodes University, which accommodates roughly 9,000 students and dominates the western half of the relatively small town.

Despite its prestigious standing as one of South Africa’s top education hubs, the town itself has fallen into disrepair, with dilapidated buildings, pothole-littered roads, and animals roaming the streets.

Residents have complained about a lack of basic services, including water, electricity, and waste removal.

The town has experienced frequent water outages since 2012, forcing residents to rely on humanitarian groups like Gift of the Givers while still being billed by the municipality.

Rubbish often piles in the streets, robots are broken, and animals like stray dogs, cows and donkeys wander through town, defecating on the sidewalks and obstructing traffic.

The roads are equally bad, with residents often joking that Makhanda is the pothole capital of the country. A few of the roads are so poorly maintained that people find it easier to walk than to navigate the potholes in a car.

The issues have become so well known that one entrepreneur opened a restaurant called the Pothole & Donkey on High Street to poke fun at the state of the city.

Makhanda’s problems have had a severe impact on its visitor numbers. It hosts the National Arts Festival every year, but attendance and revenue have sharply declined over the last decade.

The festival generated R460 million in revenue in 2013, which dropped to around R132 million a decade later.

In 2016, the then-CEO of the festival, Tony Lankester, warned that the biggest threat to the festival was not a lack of funding, but infrastructure collapse.

This is backed up by findings from the Auditor General (AG), which has issued “disclaimers of opinion” on every report on Makhanda since 2018.

It has flagged three material irregularities since 2019. The Makana municipality’s annual financial statements have also received a “poor” rating due to a lack of supporting documents.

Severe mismanagement in Makhanda

Makhanda’s poor service delivery has become a focal point for discussions about governance in the Eastern Cape.

In June 2026, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) called for the dissolution of the Makana Municipal Council.

In an investigative report into Makhanda’s water and sanitation crisis, the SAHRC said city’s water issues were a systemic human rights violation.

It noted that the water crisis is not due to a lack of available water resources, but rather governance failures, infrastructure deterioration, inadequate maintenance, weak accountability, and institutional instability.

The SAHRC highlighted persistent water delivery failures affecting schools, healthcare facilities, businesses, and vulnerable communities.

Makhanda is also facing recurring sewage spillages and dysfunctional wastewater treatment problems, creating a public health risk.

Over the years, the town has received multiple intervention measures, including governance oversight, regulatory directives, and a mandatory financial recovery plan.

These matters have also been escalated by the Auditor General and Special Investigating Unit (SIU), but Makhanda’s issues still persist.

The SAHRC therefore recommended that the Eastern Cape Provincial Executive assess whether Makhanda meets the requirements for intervention under Section 139(1)(c) of the Constitution.

It also recommended that the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs and the Department of Water and Sanitation assess whether Makana’s water functions should be reassigned to a suitably capable institution.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has expressed similar concerns. In June 2026, the party wrote to the provincial government calling for an urgent intervention in Makhanda.

“The Makana Municipality has completely reneged on their legislative responsibility to provide drinking water to residents, who are now totally dependent upon the goodwill of Non-Profit Organisations such as Gift of the Givers for access to drinking water,” the DA said.

“The few residents who do have water in their taps are at risk as the water is allegedly contaminated with sewage.”

The DA said that the municipality only made a token effort to clean up the town in preparation for the National Arts Festival this year.

“While the Makana Municipality runs around at the last minute to clean verges and fill the worst potholes on the main arterial roads in preparation for the National Arts festival, they continue to ignore the plight of their own residents,” it said.

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Photos of Makhanda

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