Ramaphosa evading accountability, legitimising poverty and inequality

Dr. Reneva Fourie

In 2018, President Ramaphosa promised South Africans service delivery breakthroughs, but has he delivered?

The past seven years have been marked by austerity measures and aggressive outsourcing that hollowed out municipalities, stripped them of technical expertise, and left poor and working-class communities exposed to collapsing infrastructure and relentless indignity. 

In praising the DA for supposed efficiency in governance, he ignores the reality that historically marginalised communities under the DA’s governance endure neglect and failing services. Through his actions and utterances, Ramaphosa is not only evading accountability but also legitimising a model that entrenches and aggravates inequality. 

The 2025 Local Government Week in Cape Town, themed ‘Restoring the dignity of our people through spatial planning, provision of human settlement and water and sanitation’, represents yet another stage for rhetorical commitments divorced from material change. South Africa’s municipal challenges cannot be solved through hollow colloquiums; they require a reckoning with the harmful policies that have weakened municipalities and emboldened corruption.

The current crises in local government cannot be understood solely through the lens of history. Apartheid’s spatial legacy continues to relegate poor and working-class communities to the margins of economic activity, but the immediate drivers of collapse are the deliberate choices of recent years. Neoliberal economic policy choices have weakened municipalities and accelerated the outsourcing of core responsibilities.

Posts for engineers, accountants, and technicians have been frozen in the name of fiscal discipline. Skilled professionals have left, and their expertise has not been replaced. Municipalities, depleted of internal capacity, have been compelled to outsource their core functions to private contractors. Some of those contractors view public resources not as a trust to be safeguarded but as an opportunity for profit and patronage.

The result is stark. Most communities endure potholes, sewerage spills, and unreliable water supply. Several municipalities are bankrupt or on the verge of collapse, suffocated by debt owed both by households and by government departments. Unable to pay Eskom and water boards, councils are dragged into financial death spirals. Infrastructure is neglected, and service delivery fails. The promises of dignity and development are displaced by daily frustration and despair.

The pattern is predictable. Austerity strips councils of resources. Outsourcing arrives not as a solution but as a predator. Large contracts – in construction, information technology, and security – are inflated to accommodate kickbacks. Costs soar, quality plummets, and communities are left with projects that collapse or freeze before completion. The more municipalities outsource, the weaker they become, until collapse appears deliberate.

The case of Emfuleni in Gauteng demonstrates this disaster. Years of austerity prevented the maintenance of wastewater plants. When collapse became unavoidable, remediation was outsourced, only for allegations of corruption, maladministration, and overpricing to surface. The City of Cape Town’s contract with Ontec Karebo Joint Venture to manage the reduction of electricity demand offers another case. It remains to be seen whether the long-term cost-effectiveness and impact on consumers will justify the expenses associated with their services.

These failures are not abstract. They claim lives. My son recently died in an accident in Simonstown involving outsourced municipal work. The contractor used an unlicensed truck driven by an unlicensed driver, making an illegal turn. A task that should have been carried out safely by the municipality itself became a fatal disaster because of outsourcing. This is the human cost of negligence and corruption. Behind every collapsed road, every dry tap, and every sewerage spill are families forced to carry unbearable loss.

The violence of outsourcing is not limited to incompetence. It also creates fertile ground for criminal networks. In the Western Cape, the construction mafia has become a destructive force. Extortion syndicates infiltrate public projects, demand protection fees, and insist on shares of contracts under the guise of community empowerment. According to reports from the 2024 National Construction Summit, more than 180 projects valued at around R63 billion have been affected by the influence of the ‘construction mafia’ since 2019.

Despite having formal governance structures and clearly defined roles for both councillors and officials, South Africa’s municipal frameworks have struggled to fend off criminal interference. The Municipal Finance Management Act lays out comprehensive standards for financial management, planning, and oversight. Additionally, the Municipal Infrastructure Grant stands out as one of the most significant conditional grants for infrastructure development in South Africa, leaving little room to excuse the poor condition of our infrastructure.

Oversight of these initiatives falls under the responsibility of the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, the National Treasury, and the Auditor-General. The South African Local Government Association is also mandated to bolster municipal capacity. However, these institutions often find themselves undermined by political patronage, corruption, and neglect.

The Local Government Week is presented as evidence of care for communities. In reality, it is theatre. What South Africans need is not another summit but functioning municipalities. They need arrests and convictions for corruption. They need outsourcing to end and municipal capacity to be rebuilt. They need an end to austerity and a renewed investment in skills, maintenance, and infrastructure.

Public patience is fraying. Communities, particularly those in marginalised areas, are losing faith in the ballot despite the increasing number of political parties. For many, elections no longer seem to offer solutions. Frustration is increasingly spilling into the streets, where anger is expressed through protests. These are the warning signs of a society that is being pushed to its breaking point.

The local government crises are not accidents of history but the result of deliberate policy choices. The consequences are borne most severely by marginalised communities. Ramaphosa’s deflection, including his misplaced praise of the DA, obscures these realities and perpetuates the very failures that erode trust in democracy. 

The path forward requires more than summits and speeches. It demands decisive action to restore municipal capacity, to make corruption unworkable, and to insource the outsourced. Only through these steps can the government begin to deliver services equitably and sustainably and restore the dignity that communities have been denied for far too long.

* Dr Reneva Fourie is a policy analyst specialising in governance, development, and security.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.