Municipal performance is a shared responsibility

After the recent State of the Nation Address by President Cyril Ramaphosa, I found myself thinking less about the headline statements and more about one of the assumptions that sit beneath them. One of the messages that rang clear was that municipalities must perform better. Governance must stabilise. Service delivery must improve. There was urgency in the tone, and in many ways that urgency is justified. But increased accountability on its own does not build the capability needed for better governance.

Corruption has weakened public trust. Poor financial management has had tangible consequences for communities. The work of the Auditor-General of South Africa in holding municipal managers accountable has been necessary and overdue. Clean audits matter. Consequence management is necessary.

Across my work in Local Just Transitions and energy affordability at the Economic Development Partnership, I spend time with municipal managers, technical officials, provincial representatives, private developers and national policymakers. When I do, I don’t see a simple story of failure. I see a picture of constraint layered upon constraint.

Municipalities sit at the point where national policy becomes lived experience. They are the sphere of government closest to communities, yet they operate within a framework that is largely designed elsewhere. National government sets policy directions and reform agendas, and structures funding flows. Provincial government is constitutionally mandated to support and strengthen local government, yet that support is not always consistent, coordinated, or clearly visibly mapped. Over time, regulatory requirements accumulate. Shifting political cycles perpetuate instability. And all these constraints land on local institutions already responsible for infrastructure that is aging, revenue bases that are shrinking and social expectations that are rising.

Panelists engage at the Local Just Transition dialogues hosted in Gauteng. Municipalities exchanged ideas about what the Just Energy Transition would mean for them.

Energy reform vividly illustrates how these layered pressures begin to interact. Municipal electricity sales have historically underpinned local revenue models, often cross-subsidising other essential services. As embedded generation expands and private actors enter the market, both inevitable and necessary for energy resilience, that revenue model begins to shift. This transition is not inherently problematic; it reflects necessary reform. However, when fiscal frameworks do not evolve at the same pace, municipalities experience revenue uncertainty while still carrying fixed service obligations. Tariff increases strain households, non-payment rises, and administrative complexity deepens.

At the same time, national government calls for greater private-sector participation, stronger BEE implementation and accelerated economic reform. These objectives are legitimate and important. But they introduce additional regulatory, contractual and governance layers at municipal level. When new participation models, transformation requirements and economic incentives are introduced without coordinated fiscal and institutional redesign, what may appear as delivery failure can in fact be the cumulative effect of system constraints compressing municipal capability.

In this sense, the question is not whether reform should happen — it should. The question is whether reform across spheres is sufficiently aligned to enable municipalities to deliver effectively within a shifting landscape.

But, like system constraints can choke a municipality’s capability to deliver, alignment between the regulatory space, private capital and local governance can unlock incredible results. The embedded solar initiative in Darling demonstrates this.

In my own work with Local Just Transition dialogues, municipal officials have consistently asked for structured peer exchange and spaces for practical learning to explore how did another municipality restructure its tariff to accommodate embedded generation? How did they negotiate risk in a public-private partnership? How did they align provincial support with local planning cycles? What went wrong before it worked? The appetite for cross-sectoral learning is thriving.

These examples are the product of coordinated incentives, clear rules and trust fostered and sustained across actors. These are the outcomes of establishing mutual accountability.

Mutual accountability means creating safe and firm mechanisms for partners to track and reflect on shared commitments. This is demonstrated well in the Darling example: when structural barriers to establishing the energy farm were identified, the issue was escalated to the appropriate governance level to unlock that solutions. This capability for collaborative governance helps partners shift from asking ‘who failed?’ to ‘what in the system prevented delivery?’ In the case of municipal performance, this is a far more relevant question to ask.

Municipal performance is not only about internal competence. It is also shaped by the architecture within which municipalities operate. Internal capacity constraints and compliance demands limit the time available for meaningful engagement across stakeholders and spheres of government. Reporting frameworks are essential for accountability, yet they can reduce the space for collective reflection and joint problem-solving. Provincial support and oversight play a critical role in strengthening local government, but the effectiveness of that support often depends on alignment of mandates, timing and resources across departments. Similarly, national reform agendas can introduce necessary change, yet without accompanying fiscal or technical recalibration they may be difficult to operationalise locally.

So, when we ask why municipalities are struggling, I find myself wanting to widen the lens.

Are provinces consistently stepping into their support mandate in ways that strengthen institutional capability rather than simply monitor it? Are fiscal reform conversations happening alongside energy reform, or are municipalities expected to absorb revenue shocks without structural adjustment? When we incentivise private participation and BEE implementation, are we designing those incentives to reinforce municipal viability, or inadvertently bypass it?

This is not an argument against scrutiny; corruption must be addressed; poor governance must be corrected. The Auditor-General’s role remains central. But if the broader ecosystem is misaligned, local government will continue to absorb pressures it cannot resolve alone.

The phrase “run municipalities like businesses” surfaces often. Yet businesses operate under very different assumptions. They can exit unprofitable markets. They can adjust pricing more freely. They are not constitutionally obligated to deliver universal access while simultaneously advancing transformation and economic inclusion. Municipalities are asked to do all of this at once and sometimes have to do it alone.

If we want our municipalities to function with the discipline and performance of high-quality enterprises, then the surrounding systems must make that possible. Incentives must align. Fiscal frameworks must evolve. Peer learning must be resourced, not incidental. Provincial and national roles must be exercised consistently and coherently.

The more I sit with this, the more I realise it leaves me with more questions than answers. This complexity is precisely why I am drawn to this work. Building system capabilities for collaborative governance sits at the intersection of policy ambition, fiscal reality, political accountability and lived experience. Is this the only solution? Probably not. I am increasingly aware of how complex this intersection is. But I am convinced that improvement will not come from isolating one sphere government and demanding better performance in abstraction. It will come from better coordinated system architecture. From recognising we need mutual accountability for municipal performance. From building systems that enable collaborative capability, not chase compliance.

That is the tension I am paying attention to right now. Not whether municipalities should perform better, they should.

But how the rest of the system can step forward to make that performance possible.

Edited: Natalie Tannous 

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