New National Treasury Interventions to Get Municipalities to Do Their Jobs

Statement by Stephen Moore MP – DA Spokesperson on Water and Sanitation:

Of the eight Metros, the ones which are failing are in such a dire state that National Treasury now has to intervene in how they deliver basic services. This is a damning indictment, that one arm of government must impose rules to force another to simply do its job. It underscores the depth of governance failures that have left residents without reliable access to water.

I am grateful for the work done by the DA in Government in pushing municipalities to put residents first. In exchange for spending their budgets appropriately to improve water & sanitation infrastructure, metros will be offered additional funding for their work.

As an important first step, the DA has championed the ‘ring-fencing’ of water & sanitation revenue to ensure funds are spent back on infrastructure repairs. We reiterate our demand to metros to introduce this policy to their councils – or the DA locally will do it for them.

For too long, due to metro failures, residents in Johannesburg, eThekwini, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay have had to endure the daily indignity of unreliable water supply, dry taps, sewage spills, ageing infrastructure, weak maintenance, as well as deep failures of governance and accountability. Treasury’s intervention is an inflection point in forcing good governance, and if metros are serious in solving their water & sanitation crises, they will take this package with both hands.

With this programme, National Treasury has recognised an important truth, which the DA echoes. South Africa’s water crisis is not only about funding. It is also about weak management, fragmented accountability, poor financial discipline, and the failure to reinvest revenue into maintenance and infrastructure.

That is why the DA welcomes the programme’s focus on having metros strengthen their foundations: through stronger management accountability, clearer financial structures, improved operational performance, and better long-term planning for metro trading services.

Done well, this will greatly assist residents. Metros must heed this call. Should this programme fail, it will squarely be on metros, and we will seek strong accountability.

South Africans need functioning infrastructure, competent management, with local governments that treat water security with the seriousness it deserves.

The DA will continue to fight against dry taps.

But the ultimate mechanism to get water into taps, is to vote DA in the upcoming election. The DA will put water into your tap.