LOCAL ELECTIONS TOUR: Nine interventions later, Ditsobotla is still failing residents and businesses

Ditsobotla Local Municipality has had nine chances to get things right, but after years of interventions, there is little evidence that the municipality has been able to break the cycle of political instability, financial mismanagement and failing basic services.

Between 2008 and 2025, the North West municipality was placed under administration nine times, the highest number of separate administrative interventions in the country’s democratic history.

Each intervention was meant to restore political stability, repair the municipality’s finances and get basic services working again, yet residents and businesses in the municipality continue to deal with many of the same problems that have plagued Ditsobotla for years.

Even in Lichtenburg, the municipality’s main town, residents complain of taps running dry without warning, electricity being cut for days without proper notification, potholes being allowed to deteriorate and rubbish now going uncollected for eight weeks.

For businesses, these failures are more than an inconvenience, because owners still have to pay their employees, keep their doors open and find ways to continue operating when the most basic municipal services cannot be relied on.

‘I was on the brink of closing my doors’

For Lichtenburg businessman André Visser*, keeping his business running through repeated electricity failures has come at a cost of at least R500,000, money he says was spent on diesel for generators and other expenses associated with keeping the business operating when the municipality could not provide a reliable power supply.

“Last year I lost R500,000 for buying diesel for the generator,” Visser said, explaining that the money was spent over just a few months because electricity would sometimes be off for weeks.

The generator has become a form of insurance against another prolonged outage, but it is expensive, costing between R8,000 and R10,000 to run for eight hours, a bill that comes on top of all the other costs of keeping a business afloat.

Visser employs 20 people, meaning the consequences of the business closing would extend well beyond him and his family.

“It’s 20 people that work here, that is 20 households and almost 100 people that rely on those salaries,” he said.

At the height of the crisis in 2025, Visser said the continued electricity problems pushed him close to shutting down the business.

“I was on the brink of closing my doors,” he said.

The electricity crisis has continued to rear its head, once again pushing him towards that decision, and he has approached municipal officials with what amounts to an ultimatum: “I will close shop.”

Visser has also warned his employees and the municipality that if the electricity supply fails for several days, he may have no choice but to close the business.

Much of the money he has used to keep the business afloat has not come from profits, but from his personal savings, leaving him with little to fall back on.

“I’ve lost all my pension money I put in there to keep it open,” he said.

For Visser, the crisis has therefore become about more than whether his own business survives; he is increasingly worried about whether there will be a local economy left to sustain the businesses that remain in Lichtenburg.

“If it’s going to carry on like this, who’s gonna buy that business?” he asked. “Who’s going to come to Lichtenburg knowing what’s going on here and start a business?”

He said a doctor friend had already left town, while larger companies, including Clover, had also departed.

At 61, starting again somewhere else is not an attractive option.
“Am I going to start over again? No ways. I mean, I’ve lost everything. I will just shut down and sit at home.”

Election Tour

Ahead of the 4 November elections, Daily Maverick traversed the country visiting several municipalities that have been identified by the Auditor-General as being among the worst-run of South Africa’s 257 municipalities.

Oversight without the information

Visser’s experience reflects a wider dysfunction inside Ditsobotla, where councillors tasked with overseeing the municipality say they are themselves struggling to get the information they need to properly hold the administration accountable.

EFF councillor Kgowe Moleme, who chairs one of the municipality’s oversight committees, said councillors had witnessed corruption first-hand and that, in many cases, this was contributing to the failure to deliver services, but their ability to investigate and act was undermined by the lack of reliable information coming from the administration.

“Most of our work relies on information from the administration and the administration does not supply us with the correct information,” Moleme said.

Moleme, who was elected about eight months ago, said electricity was among the issues giving councillors sleepless nights, while investigations into municipal projects had also raised concerns about work that remained incomplete years after it had begun.

He pointed out at least three construction projects that had been standing idle for more than a year, saying there were also instances where tenders were allegedly awarded irregularly, and projects were abandoned without clear explanations.

“That’s where we have seen a lot of corruption,” Moleme said.

The handling of municipal finances is another concern, with Moleme alleging that service providers had been paid millions of rands without proper documentation showing how the money had been spent.

“They will pay you millions, without any trace,” he said. “There’s no evidence… to support how they are running the finances of the municipality.”

Holes in the roads, holes in the system

In Ward 2, residents are dealing with another consequence of poorly managed municipal projects, with a stormwater project leaving multiple trenches and large holes across community roads.

Residents say the contractor left some of the excavations without warning signs, reflective tape or proper barriers, creating dangers for pedestrians, children and motorists, while some of the holes are directly next to people’s homes and gates.

Resident Tshidiso Lesabe said the project had made it difficult for residents to move around, particularly when it rained.

“It’s really affecting us. When it’s raining, for instance, you cannot move; you can’t even use your own vehicle,” Lesabe said.

Lesabe, who was born and raised in the area, said the problems had become so normalised that residents had come to expect little from the municipality.

“It’s bad. Nothing ever works here, and the sad part is that it’s always been like this,” he said.

With the local government elections approaching, that frustration has also begun to affect how residents view their responsibility to participate in the political system.

“Honestly speaking, I don’t even think I’ll vote because what am I voting for exactly?” Lesabe said.

When temporary solutions become permanent

Water shortages have created another layer of dependence on emergency measures, with tankers that were meant to provide temporary relief becoming an almost permanent feature in some communities.

Residents rely on the tankers for water a few times a week, while on other days, Moleme said, they may stand idle, leaving communities uncertain about when they will next receive water.

“Water tankering is meant for temporary,” Moleme said. “We talk about some communities permanently relying on water tankering because somebody is profiting from that particular water tankering.”

The failure to provide reliable water and electricity is also affecting investment in the area, Moleme said, as businesses struggle to operate and potential investors look elsewhere.

“There’s a lot of disinvestment,” he said, pointing to businesses that struggle to operate without dependable water and electricity.

For Moleme, another short-term intervention followed by a return to business as usual will not solve Ditsobotla’s problems, because the damage accumulated over years cannot be repaired by another quick fix.

“The damage is a long-term damage. It cannot be afforded the quick fix. It needs a long-term, well-structured solution,” he said.

“If you keep coming with stopgap solutions, you will not survive.”

Even the state of the roads has become a symbol of the municipality’s deterioration.

“Even the potholes are very embarrassing,” Moleme said.

‘We are turning into an old-age town’

For young people growing up in Lichtenburg, the decline is not only visible in broken infrastructure and unreliable services, but also in the number of young people who leave town once they finish school in search of jobs, better healthcare and opportunities elsewhere.

Beandri Leroux, a 19-year-old manager at Spur who has lived in Lichtenburg for almost her entire life, remembers a town that once felt very different.

“It kind of hurts, because Lichtenburg was a very nice place to live,” she said.

Like Visser, Leroux has watched residents increasingly turn to private solutions to protect themselves from municipal failures, with her own family installing six solar panels at their home at a cost of about R175,000, including the batteries, installation and related work.

“It’s been saving us on electricity,” she said. “We’ve never had a problem of no power.”

For those who can afford it, solar systems, generators and private water infrastructure have become ways of insulating themselves from unreliable municipal services, but for residents in poorer communities such as Boikhutso and informal settlements such as Jerusalema, these options are largely out of reach.

Leroux believes one of the clearest signs of Lichtenburg’s decline is the number of young people leaving.

“We are turning into an old-age town,” Leroux said.

The coming elections have done little to convince her that the cycle of decline will be broken.

“I feel very negative about Lichtenburg, let alone voting,” she said.

Yet, despite her frustration, she intends to vote because she does not want to look back and wonder whether her participation could have made a difference.

“I’ll only vote because I do not want to live with the regret that my one vote could have made a difference,” said Leroux. 

A municipality in ‘complete collapse’

The scale of Ditsobotla’s problems were revealed as particularly stark when the National Intervention Team arrived in September 2025 and found that the municipality was struggling with far more than failing services.

Its political and administrative structures were deeply dysfunctional, with two mayors, two speakers, two mayoral committees and three municipal managers, while the municipality’s financial problems had left its bank accounts depleted, with municipal employees going almost three months without being paid.

The unpaid workers often took to the streets in protest, and in some instances shut down municipal offices. 

Kopung Ralikontsane, the National Cabinet Representative (NCR), described what the intervention team found as a “complete collapse of governance”.

“That’s why you had two mayors, two speakers, two mayoral committees and three municipal managers,” Ralikontsane said.

“This is what we found here when we came. That was the first thing that we needed to stabilise.”

The latest intervention differs from previous attempts because the NCR has been given executive authority previously exercised by the council and mayor, meaning that while the council retains its legislative functions, the NCR is responsible for the municipality’s executive operations.

“You work with the mayor, but you have powers over the mayor,” Ralikontsane said.

The governance crisis was accompanied by deep administrative problems, including poor supervision of workers and overtime costs that had spiralled.

“And then you had workers here where everybody was just working the way they would want to work, not properly supervised and guided,” Ralikontsane said.

“The issue over time here was exorbitant.”

The intervention reduced the maximum overtime from 40 hours a month to 20, a move that immediately met resistance from employees who argued that it would effectively halve their earnings.

“That’s why there was a big pushback from workers,” Ralikontsane said. “You’re cutting our salary by 50% if you cut our overtime by 50% from 40 to 20 hours.”

After the municipality had struggled to pay its employees, with workers going almost three months without salaries, paying workers became a priority for the NCR when money came through the equitable share.

A mountain of debt

Ditsobotla’s financial problems, however, extended well beyond unpaid salaries, with the municipality owing SARS more than R120-million, and pension funds also among its creditors.

“We owed SARS over R120-million,” Ralikontsane said. “They also were garnishing our account. We owed pension funds.”

Payment arrangements have since been reached with creditors, including pension funds, as the intervention team attempts to bring the municipality’s finances under control.

“So finance is gradually stabilising, but there are serious challenges because this municipality does not have money,” Ralikontsane said.

In May this year, the warning signs around Ditsobotla were laid bare when the Auditor-General briefed Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa), on the municipality’s troubles.

The Auditor-General described Ditsobotla as one of the most severe cases encountered, noting that the municipality had received disclaimer audit opinions for more than a decade.

The briefing highlighted severe political and administrative instability, prolonged vacancies in senior management positions, weak internal controls, poor record-keeping and growing levels of wasteful and irregular expenditure.

Too many workers, too little money

The intervention has also identified the size of the municipal workforce as another major problem, with Ditsobotla now employing about 720 people, significantly more than the NCR believes the municipality can afford.

“Our view is that this municipality needs 450 to 500 workers,” Ralikontsane said.

But reducing the workforce and restructuring the administration will not immediately mean fewer potholes, reliable electricity or water flowing consistently from residents’ taps, and this is one of the biggest challenges facing the intervention team.

Ralikontsane admitted that the changes taking place inside the administration might be largely invisible to residents who had spent years watching their municipality deteriorate, but progress was slowly being made.

After nine interventions in 17 years, residents are left asking a difficult question: how many more chances will Ditsobotla be given before it can simply function as a municipality should?  

The NCR team remains hopeful that it can turn things around, but for residents and businesses who have spent years dealing with unreliable services, mounting costs and broken promises, the real test will be whether the changes now being made inside the municipality eventually translate into a better quality of life.

For now, Ditsobotla’s residents are waiting to see whether this intervention will finally break the cycle of political instability, financial problems and failing services that has defined the municipality for so many years, and whether, this time, things will actually be different. DM

*Not his real name. The source spoke to Daily Maverick on the condition of anonymity.

Daily Maverick’s Election Tour is supported, in part, by funding from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.