Holding politicians directly responsible for collapse will turn municipalities around
The recent move by the national government to place the collapsing Ditsobotla Local Municipality (DLM) in the North West under national administration marks a critical victory not only for the struggling towns of Lichtenburg, Coligny, Boikhutso, and more.
It also symbolises a potent new strategy aimed at forcing state action: holding politicians personally and financially responsible for constitutional failure.
The collapse of DLM has been dramatic and drawn-out, plagued by political instability, corruption, and financial mismanagement.
Despite President Cyril Ramaphosa visiting the town several years ago, declaring it a “horror story” and “captured by criminal elements,” and promising that things would improve within weeks, the situation deteriorated.
It has received disclaimed audit opinions for years, and racked up over R1.2 billion in unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
Political chaos has been so pervasive that at multiple times, more than one person claimed to be the mayor or speaker of the council.
This environment has been devastating, with poor service delivery significantly hurting residents, and as Sakeliga CEO Piet le Roux describes it, “killing businesses”.
The closure of Clover’s flagship cheese factory in Lichtenburg in 2021 was explicitly attributed to ongoing poor service delivery and infrastructure issues.
Earlier this year National Treasury and the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) said that “at this stage, there are no grounds for a national intervention.”
It said that the Provincial Executive has placed the municipality under mandatory intervention, and as such, the National Treasury developed a Financial Recovery Plan (FRP) for Ditsobotla, which was approved by the MEC for Finance in August 2023.
“It is important to recognise that the crisis at the Ditsobotla local municipality is deep-rooted and has existed for some time. Therefore, resolving the nature and depth of these problems will require significant time and effort before changes are evident to the community,” Treasury told BusinessTech.
The power of personal accountability
Non-profit organisation Sakeliga pursued a protracted legal strategy alongside local partners like Agri North West and the Ditsobotla Services Association (DSA).
After successfully forcing the provincial government to intervene under Section 139(5) of the Constitution in 2023, and finding this provincial effort ineffective, Sakeliga escalated the litigation to demand national intervention.
In an interview with Newsday, Le Roux highlighted that the constitutional provision for intervention in a failed municipality is not optional: Section 139(7) imposes a duty to intervene.
The Minister of Finance, the Minister of CoGTA, and President Ramaphosa himself “had neglected this constitutional duty,” said Le Roux.
The turning point came when Sakeliga chose to attach the President and relevant Ministers directly to the litigation.
Sakeliga formally notified Ramaphosa and several Ministers that it would seek personal cost orders against them for failing in their duty to intervene.
Crucially, the government’s response was swift following this threat. Sakeliga received acknowledgment and a reply from the state attorney shortly after sending those letters.
The national intervention was then passed through cabinet and publicly announced within about two weeks.
“The intervention was necessitated by persistent governance failures, financial mismanagement, unfunded budgets, mounting debt, stalled infrastructure projects, and the collapse of service delivery,” said CoGTA minister Velenkosini Hlabisa.
Le Roux stated there is “no doubt that this was a very necessary step and the final one that actually got them across the line”.
Sakeliga viewed the failure to intervene as a “serious breach of constitutional duties” and an “indefensible failure”.
The threat of personal punitive costs acted as the catalyst, forcing the National Executive to accept responsibility and formally place DLM under administration, the highest level of intervention provided for in the Constitution, said Le Roux.
A new model for recovery
While the national intervention is now underway, the long-term solution, according to Le Roux, lies in a fundamental shift in the political structure.
He believes the state is “far too powerful nominally” and prevents businesses and community members from taking control of failed municipal infrastructure, all while still claiming levies, rates, and taxes.
For municipalities across the country facing similar patterns of decline, this legal success provides a powerful model. However, litigation alone is often insufficient.
Local businesses must also build institutional capacity, maintain good alternative recordkeeping of disputes with the municipality, and be prepared to litigate if good relationships and negotiations (sometimes through informal Memoranda of Understanding) fail.
Ultimately, the lesson learned from Ditsobotla is that waiting for the state to act may be futile.
By forcing individual accountability onto the highest political office-bearers, non-profit groups like Sakeliga are rebalancing the power dynamic.
This strategy of attaching personal liability to constitutional failure offers a viable path to constrain state overreach and secure the recovery of South Africa’s struggling municipalities.
Le Roux said that Sakeliga and local businesses will now be “monitoring and evaluating the success of this national intervention.”
Loading ...
The majority of voters are bought with a lunch pack and a t-shirt. And let’s not forget the ANC uses the forefathers scare against the voters. But to hold politicians accountable for the wards they are living in. And Know your Chancellor