A system surviving on life support
South Africa's municipal framework is teetering on the brink of total failure, and the only way to prevent a democratic meltdown is to drastically reduce the number of local authorities across the country. That is the stark warning from Prof. Joseph Sekhampu of the North-West University's business school, who argues that the current system has become fundamentally unsustainable.
Sekhampu paints a grim picture of local government structures that appear to exist purely because the Constitution mandates them, with little regard for whether they can actually function. He points to a landscape where municipalities limp along on fiscal bailouts from national government while critical infrastructure — including water and electricity networks — disintegrates around them.
The auditor general's repeated cautions that only a handful of municipalities remain financially stable have shifted from being alarming exceptions to an entrenched norm, according to the professor. While Deputy President Paul Mashatile recently told parliament that better coordination would help stabilise service delivery, Sekhampu contends this thinking misses the real problem entirely.
"Municipalities that are so crippled and struggling cannot really govern."
The crisis, he insists, runs far deeper than poor administration. Fundamental structural questions about the very design of local government must be confronted rather than papered over with incremental improvements. Sekhampu describes the current municipal map as a "graveyard of political optimism" — a system conceived after 1994 as a vehicle for community empowerment that has since been hollowed out by shrinking tax bases and systematic looting of public resources.
Fewer councils, stronger governance
Only a small cluster of municipalities across the country operate with any real competence, while the vast majority struggle with negligible revenue streams. Sekhampu argues that maintaining decentralised authority in such cases serves no genuine purpose, and calling these entities "local government" amounts to nothing more than empty rhetoric.
His proposed remedy involves a deliberate consolidation process that would replace numerous failing municipalities with fewer but more robust regional authorities. These larger bodies would be structured around actual economic corridors rather than outdated administrative boundaries drawn decades ago. The benefits, he argues, would be substantial — greater revenue generation, improved capacity to attract and retain essential professionals such as engineers and urban planners, and more effective oversight from national and provincial government.
"This will result in the government aligning itself with the actual economic corridors rather than historical administrative boundaries."
Sekhampu firmly rejects the notion that reducing the number of municipalities would undermine democratic participation. He argues the opposite is true — clinging to a local authority's existence simply to preserve a "local voice" becomes fundamentally anti-democratic the moment that authority cannot supply clean water or maintain roads. Councils that persist without the capacity to deliver meaningful services create what he calls a paradoxical system where democratic structures endure in name while governance collapses in practice.
Representation without delivery, he warns, systematically erodes public confidence in democratic institutions themselves.
"South Africa clings to 257 municipalities as if the number itself is proof of democracy. Increasingly, it is now proof of democratic excess."
At the heart of the matter, Sekhampu maintains, lies a widening chasm between the institutional architecture the country has built and the economic reality that must sustain it. Until that gap is honestly acknowledged and addressed through consolidation, local government will continue its downward spiral.
South Africa's 257 municipalities directly affect millions of residents who depend on them for water, electricity, and road maintenance, making Professor Sekhampu's call for consolidation significant for households and businesses nationwide. Merging failing councils into larger regional authorities could stabilise service delivery and attract skilled professionals to underserved areas, though such restructuring would require constitutional negotiations and political consensus. How government responds in coming months will signal whether meaningful local governance reform is genuinely on the table.
