Same Budget, Same Floods: Cape Town’s First Rainfall Exposes the DA’s Stormwater Bluff

GOOD Statement by Siyabulela Mamkeli, GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor

The first real rainfall has once again exposed what residents across Cape Town already know, the DA-led City is not fixing the stormwater system, it is managing the optics around it.

Every year, the same cycle repeats itself. The City rolls out a “winter readiness” campaign, showcases teams cleaning manholes and sweeping roads, and assures residents that it is prepared. Then the rain arrives and the same roads flood, the same areas choke, and the same communities are left stranded.

This is not bad luck. This is bad budgeting. The City’s own budget tells the real story. While billions are advertised under “infrastructure investment”, there is no clear, ring-fenced, citywide focus on the root cause of flooding, the internal condition and capacity of the stormwater system.

Instead, what we see is a pattern:

• Small, fragmented current-year allocations for stormwater and flood alleviation
• Larger portions of spending pushed into outer years
• Heavy emphasis on planning tools, dashboards, and master plans
• No transparent prioritisation of deep system cleansing and desilting

Projects such as river upgrades, retention ponds, and flood alleviation works are listed, but meaningful spending is often delayed while residents are dealing with flooding now.

That is the truth behind the DA’s so-called “infrastructure programme”. At the same time, the City continues to promote a “winter readiness” approach focused largely on surface-level cleaning. Cleaning inlets and sweeping roads may look good on camera, but it does not fix a system that is clogged internally with sand, debris, and years of neglect. The problem is not what is visible. The problem is what is underneath.

Stormwater systems across Cape Town are losing capacity because they are not being properly cleared at depth. When that capacity is reduced, water has nowhere to go and flooding becomes inevitable. No amount of PR can change that.

What makes this even more concerning is that these are the same areas where the City is actively encouraging densification. Densification is presented as a progressive planning solution, yet the existing infrastructure cannot even accommodate the current population.

Residents are paying fixed charges and service tariffs, yet the budget does not clearly demonstrate that these funds are being directed toward resolving the core problem. A surface-level cleaning approach, without a defined and funded deep-cleaning programme, suggests that residents are effectively paying for limited interventions while the real issue remains unaddressed. This is not service delivery. This is misdirection.

The City must answer the following:

• Where is the clearly defined budget for deep stormwater system cleansing and desilting?
• How much is being spent on internal system maintenance versus surface cleaning?
• Why are major flood alleviation investments consistently pushed into future years while flooding is a present crisis?
• Why does the City prioritise mapping flooding hotspots over fixing them?
• How can densification be justified in areas where infrastructure is already failing?

Until these questions are answered with transparency and backed by real, visible investment, the City’s claims of preparedness will remain exactly what they are: a carefully managed illusion.

Cape Town residents deserve infrastructure that works, not campaigns that trend.

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