Municipalities across South Africa are in a bad way. With local government elections approaching in November, what can be done to restore South Africa’s failing cities? How can organised communities and civil society help to improve local governance?

This week, the Free Market Foundation (FMF) hosted an event at our Johannesburg offices entitled Ballot or Build-It: How to save our cities. The full video recording of the discussion is available here.

The framing of the title sought to explore whether the electoral process is sufficient to restore order in South Africa’s failing cities or whether organised community groups and private businesses need to take more responsibility for fixing the mess themselves.

The truth is that neither of these actors (politicians or active community members) can resolve these deep structural problems on their own. Voting for the right party matters, but total salvation cannot come via the voting booth.

Our guest speaker was Cilliers Brink, the former Executive Mayor of the City of Tshwane and the mayoral candidate once again for the Democratic Alliance (DA) in Pretoria. He was joined on the stage by Dr Martin van Staden, the FMF’s Head of Policy.

Each speaker gave a thoughtful presentation and participated in a panel discussion, which I moderated. This article will focus mostly on Brink’s arguments, but I would also encourage you to read the text of Van Staden’s prepared remarks about building a permission structure for communities to act on their own initiative.

Cilliers Brink and David Ansara (Alex Weiss, 26 August 2026)

The Two Ps

Brink’s diagnosis of the problems affecting our cities came down to the “Two Ps” of procurement and personnel. City officials are highly politicised, unionised, and difficult to track, he said, making getting things done difficult.

While the financial arrears of many of Gauteng’s cities are well known, the main constraint is not just a lack of money, but a chronic lack of value for money in procurement, Brink said. This is due to supply chains and tender committees having been captured by criminal syndicates, a problem exacerbated by poor policy:

“There’s an entire industry of people who only do business with the state. The effect of national procurement legislation has been to narrow the market of available goods and services to municipalities and other organs of state. And so, it is difficult. In theory we have competitive bidding. We’re supposed to have private companies that compete with each other, but in practice that pool is so small.”

Consequently, the investment that should have happened in the refurbishment of water treatment plants, electricity substations, roads, and bridges simply did not happen. The problems affecting our cities today are the result of this malign neglect of the past ten to fifteen years, he explained.

This is why Brink – and Helen Zille, the DA mayoral candidate for the City of Johannesburg – are so keen to get out as many votes for their party as possible. While good mayors are important, they alone cannot affect the changes that are needed.

For as Brink reminded our audience, it is the full Council, not the Mayor, which appoints (and fires) municipal managers, approves budgets, passes bylaws, raises loans, and signs-off on long-term contracts.

Wearing the mayoral chain means nothing without controlling the Council – and that will require securing outright majorities or stable coalitions. This looks more likely to happen in Pretoria than it does in Jo’burg.

Profit motive

Brink has developed something of a reputation as a “Thatherite”, a label which I am pleased to see he wears with pride. As Mayor, Brink would be keen to involve the private sector through active partnerships.

Brink noted that at the central government level there are already moves to crowd-in the private sector. While the pace has been slow, the government has already conceded the argument. Brink said:

“What national government has proposed with ports and railways we ought to be doing the same thing with utilities: water, electricity, and waste collection. We don’t need to sell the assets. We don’t need to privatise. We can get other models. A 15-year operating and management agreement to a qualified engineering service company to run Joburg Water, to run Joburg Electricity. You pay them based on their performance, their ability to reduce water losses, their ability to reduce electricity losses.”

Brink noted that South Africa already has two private water concessions that are models of private sector participation: one in Nelspruit (Mbombela municipality) in Mpumalanga and another in Ballito (KwaDukuza municipality) in KwaZulu-Natal.

Both water jurisdictions perform better than most municipalities in terms of water quality and the collection of rates because there is a financial incentive attached to performance, Brink said.

Brink noted that when the floods hit KwaZulu-Natal in 2022, KwaDukuza and its private water concession could make the necessary repairs to the infrastructure within days, while to this day eThekwini, which includes Durban, still hasn’t fully fixed the damage that was wrought by the floods.

Although I would prefer wholesale privatisation, private concessions will be a significant improvement on the status quo.

Selfdoen

Brink was keenly aware of the City’s own limitations and expressed his desire to work closely with community groups to solve problems at scale.

One mechanism to achieve this is through Community Improvement Districts (CIDs), where ratepayers pay additional levies which are ringfenced and used for upliftment projects in designated areas. This model has succeeded in Cape Town where there are 44 such schemes in place (compared to only one in Tshwane).

Rolling out more CIDs in Gauteng will “help organised community structures take back our streets, get them clean, and give communities a share in the authority of government,” Brink said.

Brink promised to work together with community groups such as AfriForum, whose local branches are busy mowing embankments, filling potholes, and clearing litter where the City is unwilling or unable to do so.

However, as a proponent of the rule of law, Brink stressed that community groups would have to operate in conjunction with the City through a formal, regulated process. This should not depend on the discretionary political authority of the Mayor, but rather on a transparent, rules-based basis, he said.

All politics is local

As a libertarian organisation, the FMF can sometimes give politicians a hard time, which is why we cherish our non-partisan status. We are also at pains to point out that the formal political process alone will not solve South Africa’s many problems.

It was a pleasure hosting Cilliers Brink for a stimulating discussion on local government. He is a serious man who doesn’t take himself too seriously, which is a rare combination these days. Brink is an impressive candidate, and I personally wish him well for his campaign. The people of Tshwane would be wise to vote for him.

Ansara is CEO of the Free Market Foundation.