How residents in one North West town are tackling municipal collapse

Kgetlengrivier may be the poster child for municipal collapse in SA. The main street, Jameson Road, has reverted to horse and ox wagon standards after a R90 million contract to rebuild the road was abandoned by the contractor.

A new contractor has now been brought in to complete the job after the last one walked off the job. Businesses in the town are bleeding, with one reporting a monthly drop in sales of R480 000.

After engaging with both formal and informal businesses operating on these roads, the Democratic Alliance (SA) believes the “ongoing service delivery failures amount to an economic attack on the heart of Kgetlengrivier’s central business district,” says local DA councillor Mduduzi Maphanga.

Unless the roads and intermittent water supplies are fixed, there is a danger that people will leave the area altogether, heading for the metros, which are themselves teetering on the edge.

Those with the wherewithal install solar power, sink boreholes for water, and hire private security. They’ve learned to dodge the potholes that have turned local roads into dangerous gauntlets. The poor have no option but to put up with it.

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Koster and nearby Kgetlengrivier in North West province are part of the same community, a 140km drive west of Johannesburg. The municipal decay affects everyone, especially the poor. Kgetlengrivier municipality is charged with providing services to Koster, Reagile, Derby, Redile, Swartruggens and Borelelo.

Residents here are victims of the same maladministration that has ripped the guts out of small towns up and down the country.

What sets this area apart is how the local community is tackling this regression to pre-industrial standards.

ALSO READ: Municipal manager under fire after giving himself unauthorised salary increase

First round won … and lost

Kgetlengrivier made headlines in 2020 when residents won a high court judgment that forced the local municipality to hand over control of the area’s broken water and sewage systems to the residents association.

Local businesses, farmers, and residents dug into their own pockets to find the R17 million needed to fix the town’s collapsing water and sewage systems.

Within 46 hours, clean running water was back on tap.

Local businessman Willie Jones rolled up his sleeves and poured R2.5 million of his own funds, topped up with contributions from residents, farmers, and businesses, and repaired the two pump stations supplying water to the purification plant.

After 28 days, the abandoned sewage plant (built a few years earlier at a cost of R132 million) was fully operational. All of this was accomplished by volunteers.

“Many people had never seen water of this quality in their lives,” says Jones.

Everyone seemed happy – except the local municipality, which approached the same high court in Mahikeng to have the water and sewage services returned to its control.

The court acceded to the municipality’s request, and it wasn’t long before residents complained of the same sewage spills and water outages that prompted them to approach the court in 2020.

“We ran it for four months before we were told by the court to hand control back the municipality and within weeks we were back to the same old problems of sewage spills, poor quality water and taps running dry,” says Jones.

As things stand, residents are lucky to get two hours of water a day.

ALSO READ: Outrage over municipality’s R20 million expenditure four times its budget

Sabotage seems likely

There seems little doubt that sabotage involving municipal employees and private water truck operators explains the sudden deterioration in water services.

A single 10 000-litre water truck can make R380 000 a month, which is incentive enough to make sure the pumps don’t work.

It’s a story repeated in many other parts of the country.

Jones decided to buy a water truck of his own to supply residents at no charge and keep the water mafias out of his town.

As to who gets to control the town’s water and sewage systems will be decided later this year by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Bloemfontein, which will hear a case brought by a group called Kgetlengrivier Concerned Citizens, citing the local municipality and Magalies Water Board as the respondents.

The SCA granted the residents their right to appeal in March, which suggests they have reasonable prospects of success.

Andreas Peens is the attorney representing the residents. “What we are hoping for is a precedent that will allow residents and private businesses in towns all over the country to take back control of vital services, such as water and sewage, from dysfunctional municipalities. We believe the situation has become so dire that the courts must intervene to restore order in small town communities like Kgetlengrivier.”

ALSO READ: North West municipality’s years-old water woes blamed on blackouts

Saving the historic post office building

When the SA Post Office collapsed in bankruptcy in 2023 (it is now in business rescue), the local Koster post office was abandoned.

Within days, looters started to remove light fittings, burglar bars, and anything that could be carted off by foot.

The police reported no fewer than six break-ins before local residents decided to invoke the Roman law concept of negotiorum gestio, or ‘management of business’ to take control of the building and prevent it from being further vandalised and looted.

This is where someone voluntarily intervenes to act on behalf of another, without prior consent, such as when your absent neighbour’s house springs a water leak and you jump in to fix it.

In the case of the Koster post office building, residents decided to clean it up and rent it out to businesses – the rental income going into an attorney’s trust account – to safeguard against further vandalism.

“If the post office building was vandalised, other property values in the area would have suffered, so we decided we had to take control of the situation,” says Peens.

Willie Jones was again on the job, rallying local businesses and residents together to restore the old post office building dating back to the 1930s, and then rent it out to local businesses.

There are now three tenants in the building, one a security company to protect it against further looting.

ALSO READ: Four die after inhaling gas fumes while fixing municipal sewer pipe

Local legend

Jones is something of a local legend.

When he heard reports of local girls being raped in long grass along a stretch of road near the taxi ranks, he cut the grass. There have been no reports of rapes since then.

When workers were not paid by the contractor hired to fix the town’s main road in November 2024, they protested by placing rocks in the road to prevent traffic. Jones is known and respected in the area, so he approached the workers and promised to help get them their pay provided they removed the rocks.

He prefers to get things done himself, working with the community, rather than waiting for authorities.

ALSO READ: Water mafias are taking over as municipal governance collapses

Court battle over electricity meters

Just last week, the Kgetlengrivier municipality was at the receiving end of another judgment in the Mahikeng High Court brought by Ideal Prepaid, a company contracted to install smart electricity meters in 2015.

Judge Andrew Reddy interdicted the municipality from removing its meters pending a review of the decision to cancel the contract with Ideal Prepaid and appoint Vodacom instead.

A reading of the judgment casts light on some of the background, and it turns out Kgetlengrivier had a debt to Eskom of R16.4 million when Ideal Prepaid took over in 2017. The plan was to pay off this debt and bring the Eskom account up to date.

A few months into the contract, Ideal Prepaid says the municipality started “to interfere with the schedules of collected revenue” with requests that funds collected be diverted to salaries, among other things.

The result was a ballooning in the Eskom debt to R250 million.

The prepaid vending contract with Ideal Prepaid came to an end in December 2022 but was extended on a month-by-month basis, later amended to allow for a six-month notice period.

In January 2025 it was announced that Vodacom was appointed as the new service provider by National Treasury, without Ideal Prepaid being given the requisite six months’ notice.

This was followed by the removal of several Ideal Prepaid-installed meters – for reasons many residents believe was a funds grab by the municipality, which was placed under administration in 2022 due to financial distress, governance failure, and an inability to deliver basic services effectively.

ALSO READ: Strategies formulated to rescue North West municipalities

Municipality running out of road?

For several years the Auditor-General has issued disclaimers, the worst audit outcome, against the municipality due to irregular spending, lack of documents and no-consequence management.

“I cannot see this municipality surviving the next five years,” says Peens.

“And, frankly, that’s a good thing. Provincial and national government are going to have to come up with a better model for local government, one that involves the private sector. All we want is the services we pay for and that may be through public-private partnerships. Instead, we have to pay rates and taxes and receive nothing in return, then we have to go out and install our own solar systems, boreholes and remove ourselves completely from any reliance on the municipality.

“The existing system is broken and it’s time we all faced up to it so we can devise a better way forward.”

In the case of Kgetlengrivier, this means a willingness to drag the municipality to court to enforce residents’ rights, invoking the Roman law concept of negotiorum gestio, and fixing local problems without asking permission from anyone.

That, says Peens, is how small towns in South Africa can be saved from ruin.

Big job ahead …

This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.