Cape Town Budget Deceit: Residents Must Pressure Their Councillors to Boycott Vote Sitting

18 May 2025: Indigent Capetonians will be asked to cough up nearly 10% extra on their monthly bills from the City of Cape Town, detailed assessment of the budget by the GOOD Party has revealed. The deadline for public comments on the budget has passed without residents being fully informed of the tariff increases that await them.

So opaque are the complicated new set of tariffs in the budget that, though they’ve been published, they are virtually impossible for the average resident to understand. The details of the impacts have been so concealed as to offend the duty of transparency for meaningful public comment, altogether.

The fact is that despite the theatrics of a below-inflation 2% electricity tariff increase, what the City doesn’t advertise at all is that it has simply performed a tariff juggling act and will actually be increasing its revenues from ratepayers by more than 22% this year. The details are below…

Residents of Cape Town have two weeks to convince their ward councillors to act against the City’s extortionary tactics by boycotting the sitting of council on 29 May.
Those councillors who attend the sitting and vote for the budget must be held accountable for voting to unreasonably and unaffordably tax the poorest City residents.

Numbers don’t lie
Much of the City’s sleight of hand appears driven by its desire to be seen to be charging less for electricity, after being criticised for levying higher than regulator-permitted electricity tariff increases for the past two years. Thus, the City focused on selling residents the snake oil that by imposing just a 2% electricity tariff increase it had their backs. It also tried selling the idea that tariff impacts on indigent residents will be cushioned by the rich.

Both those ideas are false.

Instead of continuing to over-charge clients for electricity, they’ve simply shifted the over-charges to a new cleaning tariff. It claims the new tariff regime protects the poorest households, but its own calculations show that indigent households will experience a 9.88% increase in their monthly bill. That’s more than three times the current inflation rate.

The notion that the City is giving residents a break is further undermined by the amount of extra profit the City will make from its proposed new tariff regime. Last year, Cape Town bought electricity from ESKOM for R15.472 billion and sold it to users for R21.328 billion. It described the R5.586 billion profit as “a contribution to rates”.

This year the mayor says the electricity tariffs will no longer include a contribution to rates. Yet, the City projects it will still make a profit of R4.727 billion off electricity!
When you add the projected R2.457 billion income from the new cleansing tariff, it equates to residents coughing up 22.6% extra through rates bills this year.

If all this money was going to be spent addressing the massive disparities in Capetonians living environments, there may be some merit. But the budget reveals no such prioritisation. It’ll be 22.6% extra, but inequality will be sustained.

GOOD Political Position: GOOD is a social democratic political party.

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