The Democratic Alliance (DA) in the Northern Cape will use the municipal oversight visits scheduled by the Northern Cape Provincial Legislature for May to drive accountability and demand real solutions to the problems exposed in the MFMA audit outcomes published by the Auditor-General today.
The province regressed from five clean audits in the 2020/21 financial year to only one in 2024/25, with compliance remaining a stumbling block for governance and oversight structures not doing enough to stop the service delivery suffering for residents. The single clean audit belongs to Frances Baard, a district in which none of the four local municipalities could obtain a clean audit. Kimberley, Jan Kempdorp, Barkley-West, and Warrenton are becoming synonymous with water woes, sewage spills, dilapidated roads, and crumbling infrastructure that cannot meet the service delivery needs of local communities. Clearly, districts are not fulfilling their obligation to guide local municipalities and to assist with the kind of technical expertise, support, or skills that can alleviate the manmade disasters of mismanagement at local level.
Eskom’s final decision to suspend bulk electricity to the embattled Kai !Garib Local Municipality, as published yesterday, must also be seen as a red flag for financial maturity and viability in the province. Kai !Garib is one of the sixteen municipalities in the province that qualified for the Eskom debt relief programme, but failed to meet the strict terms and conditions that were set. Instead of reducing its debts, monies owed to Eskom skyrocketed to more than R1.036 billion as of March 2026 and residents will now face punitive loadshedding from 8 May onwards.
This is the exact opposite of what the debt relief programme was intended to achieve. The MFMA audit outcomes confirms that ten municipalities (63%) on the debt relief programme are not complying with the terms and conditions, with a third not having strategies to prevent recurrence of these debts and more than half failing to implement recommendations from the Northern Cape Provincial Treasury.
Residents who suffer the consequences of municipal mismanagement must bear in mind that it is only the DA that has a proven track record of governing municipalities that work well and delivers reliable services, clean audits, proper financial management, and stable governance. We stand ready to bring this experience to the Northern Cape communities.