Note to Broadcasters: Please find the attached soundbites in English and Afrikaans by Hendriëtte van Huyssteen.
- Four North West municipalities remain under intervention five years later due to ANC governance failures.
- Financial mismanagement, corruption allegations and maladministration continue to undermine service delivery.
- The DA calls for accountable leadership and municipalities that work.
The DA will write to North West COGTA MEC Gaoage Oageng Molapisi demanding a full public progress report on each of the four municipal interventions, including clear deadlines, consequences for officials implicated in corruption or maladministration, and a turnaround plan to restore service delivery.
This as these municipalities have consistently failed for years to deliver the most basic of things: services to residents. This is proven by the fact that the provincial government have been forced to intervene with the management of Madibeng, Tswaing, Kgetlengrivier and Naledi Local Municipalities since 2021.
This poses urgent questions regarding the governance record of these municipalities since November 2021, when the intervention was first ordered, which was also the month municipal councils were inaugurated across the province. At the time, optimism spread as new councils were sworn in, but a dispiriting reality soon showed a stagnant status quo. The four affected municipalities fall under ANC-led councils, whose governance has received repeated allegations and reported findings of corruption and maladministration and of not fulfilling their obligations.
In Naledi Local Municipality, a particularly troubling example comes to light. Maladministration in this municipality has reached the point where even the Premier of the province has become entangled in irregular appointment processes.
Madibeng Local Municipality was the subject of a damning Section 106 forensic investigation, which found that municipal bulk accounts were unlawfully altered, resulting in fraudulent payments of millions of rands into private bank accounts, alongside widespread irregular staff appointments and illegal procurement practices. According to the report, Mayor Douglas Maimane failed to table the findings before council, delaying accountability and remedial action.
Tswaing Local Municipality also had an ANC mayor and councillors who failed to fulfil their duties, according to another recent Section 106 report.
Kgetlengrivier Local Municipality is still struggling to address allegations of tender manipulation that compromise the credibility of public procurement.
Since 2021 the ANC has had the legal tools, under Section 139(5)(c), to intervene effectively in failing North West municipalities, with a provincial government also under the ANC’s monopoly. The refusal to reverse this downward trend in all of these municipalities highlights an appalling failure by the ANC to control its own administrations.
The role of the PER, according to the 2026 gazette, is key. By structurally curtailing the executive powers of municipal councils and the authority of Municipal Managers and the administration, the PER takes over the executive side of making sure that financial recovery plans are carried out and that governance ceases to collapse. In simple terms, the PER serves as “a deprived administrative guardian,” limiting council excesses and ensuring the need for compliance to save on very limited municipal resources and return to governance standards.
Proclamations without results are clearly ineffective in spurring public faith. While legislation has been thrown into the mix, the ANC remains the governing party in the North West Province, yet it has failed to fulfil its mandate. With millions of voters poised for 2026 municipal elections, political slogans will do only so much; citizens will ask for accountability and transparency, and an effective government, not empty platitudes. The only party with a track record of good governance in South Africa is the Democratic Alliance. It is the only party capable of restoring functional councils, ensuring accountable municipal administration and getting our North West towns working