Note to Editors: Please find attached English and Afrikaans soundbites by Cllr Suzette Steyn and Sesotho soundbite by Cllr David Masoeu MPL.
The DA has submitted a motion to the Free State Legislature calling for the establishment of an independent recovery task team with the expertise and enforcement powers needed to monitor municipal interventions and restore accountability in Mafube Local Municipality.
Despite three years of provincial intervention under Sections 139 and 154 of the Constitution, alongside a National Treasury Financial Recovery Plan, Mafube Local Municipality is still in freefall. Instead of improvement, residents continue to face worsening service-delivery failures and a municipality that is increasingly unable to perform even its most basic functions.
The interventions have become a box-ticking exercise focused on procedural compliance, unfunded budgets and administrative reporting, while the real crisis on the ground is ignored.
Burst water pipes remain unrepaired, refuse collection is erratic or non-existent, roads are deteriorating rapidly, and public infrastructure is crumbling.
The municipality remains critically understaffed, with a severe shortage of qualified engineers, financial experts and experienced senior managers. This has been worsened by a reliance on consultants who fail to transfer skills while consuming scarce resources. Alarmingly, consultant payments continue to be prioritised over staff salaries, pension contributions and critical creditors such as Eskom.
The consequences have been severe. Delays in the municipality’s equitable share resulted in municipal workers going unpaid for three months. Eskom disconnected streetlights in Namahadi due to non-payment, leaving communities in darkness and increasing safety risks.
In Villiers, private companies were forced to provide materials to repair leaking pipes at the water treatment plant after the municipality failed to act.
Financial mismanagement has further paralysed operations. The municipality’s failure to pay a legal consultant led the Sheriff to attach the municipal vehicle fleet, leaving technical teams in Frankfort and Villiers with only one operational vehicle each to respond to water leaks and sewer spillages. Refuse removal has effectively collapsed due to a lack of functioning vehicles.
Massive consumer debt, a broken billing system and widespread account disputes also burden Mafube. No administrative intervention can succeed where public trust has been destroyed, and billing systems remain fundamentally dysfunctional.
Financial recovery plans are failing because the fundamentals no longer exist. With revenue collection often below 20%, a dwindling indigent register, mounting Eskom debt, unpaid pension funds, historical liabilities, and failing water and sanitation systems, the municipality does not have the cash flow to maintain services.
Instead of rebuilding internal capacity, Mafube remains dependent on costly external consultants, creating inefficiencies and draining funds that should be directed to frontline service delivery.
We maintain that Mafube’s collapse cannot be fixed through paperwork and passive oversight. An independent recovery task team with enforcement powers, mandatory public progress reporting and full accountability for those responsible for the municipality’s financial collapse is urgently required.
Only decisive intervention and real accountability can restore reliable basic services to the people of Mafube.