This is a clarion call to Helen Zille, Cilliers Brink, Retief Odendaal and Nasiphi Moya.

South Africa does not need another generation of mayors armed with turnaround strategies, strategic planning workshops, and promises to restore service delivery. It needs a Margaret Thatcher for local government; someone prepared to confront organised labour, challenge entrenched employment practices, and remind municipal employees that the public, rather than the payroll, is the reason municipalities exist.

As Johannesburg, Tshwane, and Nelson Mandela Bay contemplate new political leadership, particularly under the Democratic Alliance, voters are entitled to expect more than a change of occupants in the mayoral office.

That is considerably more difficult than winning an election.

A new mayor inherits employees, managers, union representatives, collective agreements, and procurement relationships that have survived successive administrations. Municipal bureaucracies have developed an impressive capacity to outlive, outmanoeuvre, and outwait those elected to govern them.

The politicians change. The salary bill survives. The overtime continues. The consultants return. The potholes remain available for inspection by the next mayoral committee.

The question is whether incoming leaders will finally confront this system or spend another five years explaining why reform proved impossible.

The Tripartite Alliance: 32 Years of Political Accommodation

Since 1994, South African politics has been shaped by the relationship between the African National Congress (ANC), the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and the South African Communist Party. For much of that period, the ANC-controlled national government and numerous municipalities while maintaining a political alliance with organised labour.

The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU), a principal municipal union, is affiliated to COSATU. The Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (IMATU) operates independently but participates in the same local government bargaining system.

This creates an uncomfortable tension. Unions exist to advance members' interests. Government exists to serve the entire electorate, including unemployed residents, businesses, ratepayers, and communities dependent on municipal services.

Those interests sometimes coincide. They also conflict when employment expenditure becomes unaffordable, restructuring threatens established privileges, or industrial action interrupts essential services.

The accusation against successive ANC-led administrations is that political accommodation of organised labour has too frequently prevailed over effective financial and managerial discipline. The alliance cannot explain every municipal failure, but its influence on bargaining, employment policy, and resistance to reform deserves serious examination.

A governing party confronting a COSATU-affiliated union could find itself challenging an organisation within its own political family. That is hardly an ideal foundation for uncompromising management.

South Africa must decide whether municipal employment policy will continue to accommodate political relationships or be governed by affordability, productivity and the interests of residents.

The Municipal Payroll: What are Residents Buying?

Johannesburg's employee-related expenditure reached approximately R20.73 billion in 2024/25. Research from the Centre for Development and Enterprise, a think-tank based in the city, estimates that average annual remuneration increased from R400 000 in 2016/17 to R595 000 in 2024/25, while reported employee numbers rose from 24 620 to 34,453.

That represents average employment costs approaching R50 000 monthly, including benefits and other employment costs rather than take-home salary. Although the underlying staffing figures contain inconsistencies, the financial burden is substantial.

What corresponding improvement have Johannesburg's residents experienced in roads, water reliability, electricity restoration, refuse collection, and infrastructure maintenance?

Across the eight metropolitan municipalities, the Auditor-General reported expenditure of R380.55 billion in 2024/25, including R346.14 billion in operating expenditure. Yet metros spent the equivalent of only 4% of municipal asset values on repairs and maintenance, against National Treasury's 8% benchmark.

The contradiction is striking. Municipalities spend enormous sums operating themselves while the infrastructure they exist to maintain deteriorates.

Competent engineers, electricians, technicians, and municipal professionals are indispensable. The problem arises when employment costs become disconnected from measurable performance. Every municipality should demonstrate what its workforce produces and whether residents receive reasonable value.

Overtime: When Sunset Becomes Profitable

Tshwane reportedly spent approximately R738 million on overtime in 2024/25, while Nelson Mandela Bay's audited figures indicate R463 million. In Nelson Mandela Bay, overtime equalled approximately 21% of reported basic salaries and wages expenditure.

That does not mean every employee earned an additional 21%. It demonstrates the extraordinary scale of aggregate overtime spending.

Overtime is necessary. Pipes burst, electrical networks fail, and emergency services cannot close at five o'clock. The problem begins when overtime becomes an expected supplement to remuneration rather than an exceptional operational requirement.

Media investigations have reported allegations that some municipal employees prolong tasks or defer interventions until enhanced overtime rates apply. These allegations require verification, but the incentive deserves examination.

There is something profoundly wrong with an arrangement in which a broken water pipe potentially becomes more rewarding after sunset.

The greater indictment belongs to management. Employees should not authorise their own overtime. Supervisors and departmental heads must establish why work could not be completed during ordinary hours and verify that additional expenditure was necessary.

National Treasury's 2024/25 compliance reporting identifies overtime overspending as a significant fiscal risk and evidence of weak payroll controls.

Municipalities should publish overtime expenditure by department, employee category, and operational function, identifying unusually high claims and the proportion of remuneration derived from overtime.

If employees regularly earn substantial additions to their salaries through overtime, management must explain the operational justification. Residents deserve to know whether they are paying for additional work or compensating for work that should already have been performed.

The Wage Agreement That Outlives the Election

In 2024, the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), SAMWU, and IMATU concluded a five-year municipal wage agreement extending until June 2029.

It provided for a 6% increase in 2024/25, followed by CPI plus 0.75 percentage points in each of the next two years and CPI plus 1.25 percentage points in the final two years, subject to the agreement's provisions.

The agreement covers approximately 300 000 municipal workers. For employees, it provides predictability and inflation protection. For incoming administrations, it represents substantial inherited financial commitments.

A newly elected mayor cannot simply disregard a binding collective agreement. Exemption mechanisms exist, but municipalities experiencing financial distress must navigate the bargaining framework.

The question is whether that framework adequately accommodates municipalities with radically different financial circumstances.

Collective bargaining should establish fair employment conditions within sustainable institutions. Protecting remuneration while the employer becomes progressively incapable of delivering services ultimately threatens employees and residents alike.

Senior Management: Well Paid to Manage

Tshwane's 2024/25 financial statements disclose approximately R3.61 million in annual remuneration and cellphone allowance for its city manager.

Senior remuneration should attract capable professionals. It must also carry meaningful accountability.

The Auditor-General found that all eight metropolitan municipalities materially failed to comply with procurement and contract management requirements in 2024/25. Seven failed materially in preventing unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, while six recorded material non-compliance involving consequence management.

Johannesburg's disciplinary board inadequately monitored disciplinary proceedings. Tshwane failed to implement its Consequence Management Framework.

These failures belong squarely within the responsibilities of management and political oversight.

A manager who tolerates unauthorised overtime, neglects disciplinary proceedings, or repeatedly appoints consultants to compensate for departmental weaknesses cannot reasonably claim to be an innocent spectator.

Senior management is employed to manage. The job description does not end at attending meetings, signing submissions and commissioning another organisational review.

Incoming leaders must assess whether existing executives possess the competence and determination to implement reform, applying lawful performance and disciplinary procedures where necessary.

The Consultant Economy: Two Payrolls for One Job

In 2024/25, 225 municipalities spent approximately R1.61 billion on financial reporting consultants, compared with R590 million spent by 179 municipalities a decade earlier.

Yet 61% of municipalities using consultants submitted financial statements containing material misstatements in areas for which those consultants had been appointed.

Municipalities employ finance professionals, then hire consultants to perform financial reporting functions, only to discover that the resulting statements still contain significant errors.

One wonders whether consultants compensate for internal deficiencies or whether internal departments have become permanent administrative companions to the consultancy industry.

Specialised outsourcing is sometimes justified. Repeated outsourcing of routine responsibilities without skills transfer or improved performance is evidence of institutional weakness.

It also creates opportunities for corruption.

Between 2021/22 and 2024/25, metropolitan municipalities and their entities incurred R73.87 billion in irregular expenditure, 77% involving procurement and contract management non-compliance. Tshwane accounted for R12.17 billion, while Johannesburg's City Power accounted for R11.82 billion.

Irregular expenditure does not automatically establish criminality. It reveals serious weaknesses in financial controls and procurement oversight.

Where corruption is established, beneficiaries can include contractors, officials and politically connected interests. Incoming administrations must investigate recurring contracts, conflicts of interest, emergency procurement and arrangements that unnecessarily displace internal municipal capacity.

The objective must be to eliminate financial extraction and restore competent public administration.

Essential Services: The Public Cannot Be Held Hostage

The most urgent confrontation concerns essential municipal services.

South African law already restricts strike action by employees engaged in designated essential services, including water supply and distribution, electricity generation and distribution, firefighting, municipal traffic services, and specified sanitation functions.

The sanitation designations include waterborne sewerage operations, sewage treatment, organic refuse collection, infectious medical refuse collection, disposal-site operations, and refuse left uncollected for 14 days or longer.

Emergency water and electrical repairs necessary to maintain designated services require protection. Routine road repairs and ordinary domestic refuse collection are not automatically essential services, although further designation should be considered where interruption demonstrably threatens life, health, or personal safety.

The distinction is legally important. The constitutional right to strike cannot simply be abolished for every municipal employee. Equally, essential-service restrictions exist precisely because some functions must continue during industrial disputes.

Tshwane's 2023 wage dispute demonstrated what happens when labour conflict spills into service delivery. Industrial action disrupted waste collection, water-leak repairs, electricity restoration, transport and clinic services.

Residents who were not parties to the dispute bore the consequences.

A household without water cannot negotiate with SAMWU. A family without electricity cannot resolve a bargaining dispute. Communities exposed to sewage or hazardous refuse cannot reasonably be expected to accept prolonged disruption as an ordinary feature of industrial relations.

The Labour Relations Act provides dispute-resolution mechanisms for employees prohibited from striking, alongside minimum-service arrangements where applicable.

Municipalities must identify employees performing designated essential functions, establish reliable contingency arrangements, and enforce lawful instructions.

Where prohibited industrial action occurs, management must pursue appropriate legal remedies. Intimidation, violence, sabotage and infrastructure damage must attract disciplinary action and criminal investigation where offences are established.

There is no automatic criminal penalty for every unprotected strike. The law distinguishes unlawful industrial action from criminal misconduct, and disciplinary consequences must remain fair and proportionate.

But existing safeguards are worthless if municipal leadership refuses to enforce them.

The Essential Services Committee should review gaps in current designations, particularly emergency infrastructure interventions. Municipalities must ensure that designated essential services continue during disputes affecting other employees.

Organised labour must accept that legally protected essential services cannot become instruments of industrial pressure.

Management must accept that fear of confrontation is no excuse for failing to enforce the law.

The public is entitled to reliable water, electricity, and essential sanitation services irrespective of the state of relations between unions and municipal employers.

The First 100 Days: Govern or Get Out of the Way

Johannesburg, Tshwane, and Nelson Mandela Bay present an immediate test of political resolve.

The Democratic Alliance (DA), should it assume responsibility for these metros, must resist the temptation to spend five years explaining the difficulties inherited from its predecessors. Residents have heard enough about inherited problems. They want them corrected.

Within 100 days, incoming administrations should publish independent assessments of staffing, overtime, vacancies, disciplinary backlogs, consultant dependence, and essential-service arrangements.

These assessments must identify unnecessary duplication, management weaknesses, opportunities to restore internal technical capacity, and operational functions requiring restructuring.

Within the first year, residents should see measurable reductions in unauthorised overtime, improved infrastructure response times, stronger procurement controls, functioning disciplinary processes, and greater reliability of essential services.

Reform will require negotiation with organised labour. Consultation is a legal obligation, but it cannot become a permanent substitute for decision-making.

The same scrutiny must extend to managers, politicians, and contractors. No union affiliation, executive title, or political relationship should place anyone beyond lawful accountability.

The Time for Political Accommodation is Over

South Africa's municipal crisis is ultimately a crisis of authority.

National Treasury reported that accumulated unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful municipal expenditure reached R268.13 billion in 2024/25, compared with R264.10 billion the previous year.

The country possesses extensive labour legislation, financial management laws, procurement regulations, and essential-service protections. What remains deficient is the consistent exercise of lawful authority.

For three decades, the political relationship between the ANC and organised labour has complicated the willingness of government to confront entrenched employment interests. That history must give way to a more demanding standard.

The incoming leadership must honour legitimate employment rights while making clear that no organisation possesses an effective veto over lawful restructuring, financial discipline or essential-service protection.

Margaret Thatcher's significance lies partly in her willingness to confront entrenched union power despite the political consequences. South Africa need not reproduce every aspect of her industrial programme to recognise the importance of that determination.

Our municipalities need leaders prepared to be unpopular with powerful interests in order to become effective on behalf of the people who elected them.

These municipal elections must mark the beginning of a different relationship between elected leadership and permanent administration. Remuneration must carry responsibility, performance must be measured, expenditure must be justified, and the public interest must prevail over institutional privilege.

South Africa cannot afford another five years of political accommodation disguised as labour peace, or administrative paralysis presented as consultation.

Organised labour will retain its legitimate place in a constitutional democracy. What must end is the assumption that union opposition alone can determine whether necessary municipal reforms proceed.

The managers have had their opportunities. The politicians have had their excuses. The unions have exercised their considerable influence.

Now the residents must have their municipalities back.

Dr Ivor Blumenthal is a specialist in labour law, skills development, organisational strategy and workplace governance, with senior leadership experience including Regional HR Manager, CEO of the Services SETA, EU representative for South Africa, Vice President of WorldSkills and Johannesburg City Councillor. His expertise spans employment relations, regulatory compliance, human capital development and institutional reform, underpinned by legal, psychological and commercial expertise, with a longstanding passion for radio and journalism.