29/05/2026
THE PEOPLE OF MAGARENG DESERVES A BREAK FROM MUNICIPAL AUSTERITY BUDGETS WHICH OVERBURDENS THE POOR
The South African Communist Party in Magareng has closely followed the passing of the 2025/2026 municipal budget and Medium-Term Revenue and Expenditure Framework tabled before Council.
This budget is hopeless and will not lead to the reduction in the suffering of the working class, the poor, the unemployed youth, pensioners, farmworkers and the struggling masses of all parts of Magareng in Warrenton, Warrenvale, Stasie, Majeng, Ikhutseng, Ditshotshwaneng, Rabaki, Sonderwater and surrounding communities. Instead the misery of our people will continue alongside poverty and the continued decay of infrastructure.
The municipality makes an admission that it faces an unfunded deficit of more than R25.5 million. This is not a fortuitous accounting problem. It is the concrete manifestation of the crisis of neoliberal macroeconomic policy, austerity budgeting and fiscal consolidation imposed by the government of national unity on the people. The working class and poor are expected to carry the burden of an economic crisis they did not create, whilst financial markets and international investors are appeased by government’s so-called fiscal discipline, instead of growing real state domestic investment.
The budget further reveals a dramatic collapse in capital expenditure allocations. It means the money allocated to fixing water pipes, sewage, roads, electricity infrastructure to repair community buildings, such as children sports grounds, stadiums, community halls even council property, has been reduced from R82 million in 2024/2025 to approximately R36 million in 2025/2026.
This is a devastating blow to infrastructure-led development in a municipality facing enormous backlogs in water, sanitation, roads, housing and electricity infrastructure.
Fixing damaged infrastructure in Magareng is a developmentally urgent necessity, through which any dignified jobs creation can be created. You can’t cut capital expenditure allocations by 56% and still hope that potholes will be fixed, water will flow from taps and spilling sewerage repaired. The R36 million is grossly inadequate for any meaningful capital projects in Magareng.
These enormous cuts are an admission that the broken promises in election manifestos to the people, by those leading the municipality will not be fulfilled.
The SACP views this as nothing but an attack on the poor that opens up floodgates for further degeneration in the entire municipality.
The budget states that National Treasury significantly reduced conditional grants without explanation. The SACP has campaigned relentlessly for the policy of neoliberalism to be abandoned as it is anti-people, anti-developmental and leads to greater poverty. The minister of Finance who used to drink Heineken, mocked us that it’s because SACP leaders don’t have responsibilities. It is now evident what the impact of his knowledge of responsibility is, to deepen poverty and increase burdens on peoples livelihoods. We wonder if he’s is not on something stronger than Heineken.
The reduction of infrastructure allocations to poor municipalities while monopoly, cannot be compared to massive concessions in benefits extended in favour of corporate capital. Private capital continues to enjoy massive concentrations of wealth and this demonstrates whose interests are prioritised in the current economic order.
The budget acknowledges that water remains the number one priority of communities. for the SACP we consider this as simply, "diarrhea of words and constipation of action". If this was true, the municipality would not remain trapped in dependence on conditional grants for even the most basic developmental obligations. A municipality cannot claim genuine developmental autonomy while over 64% of its revenue depends on transfers from the national fiscus. It downright lack of vision.
The SACP notes with grave concern that:
• Operational expenditure is budgeted at over R197 million while operational revenue stands at only R170 million.
• Debt impairment alone amounts to approximately R31.8 million.
• The municipality aims for only a 60% collection rate.
• Repairs and maintenance remain far below National Treasury norms at approximately 4%.
• Electricity bulk purchases from Eskom alone, continue to consume enormous resources.
• Communities are subjected to large tariff increases despite worsening unemployment and poverty.
These realities expose the structural crisis in Magareng Municipality. We also are aware of how both data is fudged for political expediency and how public consultations procedures around both the budget and IDP were reduced to a farce. In this regard we hope that the review of the White Paper on local government will lead to genuine public consultations.
The municipality admits that communities are demanding jobs. Yet the so-called “job creation” interventions remain largely temporary EPWP-type measures that do not fundamentally ameliorate the burden of unemployment. Many of our youth encounter the barrier of extensive patronage in EPWP employment. There is appalling lack of vision for job creation overall. One hundred EPWP opportunities can hardly resolve mass unemployment rooted in the lack of productive industry, the agrarian crisis and the domination of the economy by monopoly capital.
The SACP rejects the logic that municipalities must increasingly rely on cost recovery, tariff hikes, traffic fines and aggressive revenue collection from impoverished communities in order to survive financially. Water, sanitation, electricity and refuse removal are not commodities for profit extraction. They are basic social rights. The fact of the matter is that the lack of extension of services is proportional to increasing defaults in payments as people can’t pay for services they don’t enjoy. Payment defaults have an even wider root cause in the incorrect billing and historic debts issues and disputes which remains unresolved, with no appetite to put in place specific policies to regulate these.
As a result of being married to neoliberal policy, the municipality is enamoured to the technocratic language of “cost containment”, “tightening the belt” and “revenue enhancement” when working-class communities already live under unbearable socio-economic conditions. The poor cannot continue subsidising a failed capitalist economy through tariffs, debt collection and declining services.
The municipality correctly identifies water, sanitation, roads, housing and job creation as key priorities. However, these priorities cannot be realised through fragmented grant dependency and austerity budgeting. There must be a decisive break with neoliberal fiscal orthodoxy.
The SACP therefore calls for:
1. An expansionary local budget with infrastructural investment and labour intensive employment creation. The current municipal budget is contractionary and will inevitably deepen the cost-of-living crisis.
2. A decisive rejection of austerity measures imposed on Magareng and other municipalities by National Treasury.
3. Increased unconditional developmental transfers to municipalities serving poor and working-class communities.
4. Massive public investment in water, sanitation, roads, health and housing infrastructure.
5. The rebuilding of municipal technical and engineering capacity instead of excessive outsourcing and contracted services.
6. A publicly led local industrialisation programme to create permanent decent jobs.
7. Democratic community participation beyond farcical IDP public consultations.
8. Radical anti-corruption combatting measures and transparent public oversight over all infrastructure projects.
9. The transformation of local government into a genuinely developmental and people-centred sphere of governance.
The SACP also warns against ignoring public demands for services and the consistent ridiculing of those struggling for these services. Many of residents’ lives in water clogged communities, especially in Ginhall and Chris Hani. Houses must be built for the communities of Warrenvale, Majeng, Rabaki, Sonderwater and Ditshotshwaneng.
Our people have been living under deprived conditions for far too long with the precise knowledge of the municipality.
How will the municipality address poverty and development backlogs when its own budget documents admit that the expenditure required to address “will inevitably always exceed available funding”? This is a devastating indictment of the current capitalist accumulation path. It is not “inevitable” as the budget suggests, and we reject the increase of tariffs on water, refuse and other vital services. We do not accept the logic that the poor should pay for the so-called difficult choice as if neoliberalism was not a policy choice of the municipality. The people were never asked to make such a choice in the first instance, and this statement is therefore grossly misleading.
The SACP reiterates that local government cannot be rescued through technocratic managerialism alone. No amount of “virtual meetings”, overtime reductions or administrative efficiencies can overcome the structural crisis produced by neoliberal capitalism.
What is required is a fundamentally different developmental path of engineering rapid economic development through redistribution.
The SACP calls upon the people of Magereng, the workers, progressive youth, women, civic formations and all democratic forces to intensify struggles for:
• A new vision for economic transformation that creates dignified jobs,
• Food production, land redistribution and agrarian reform
• public ownership of strategic sectors, and the,
• decommodification of basic services.
• Democratic involvement of the people in municipal governance.
The struggle for quality local government cannot be separated from the broader struggle to end capitalist exploitation and neoliberalism.
Contact:
Tsholofelo Tlhaloganyo
SACP Magareng Sub-district
Contact: 083 247 2075
Email: [email protected]
