SONA Promises A Ray Of Hope For Municipalities. But Will Government Deliver?

Lucas Ledwaba

IT was not surprising that one of the loudest cheers to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address on Thursday came when he announced some municipalities would be allowed to procure their own power directly.

The Auditor General’s latest audit report on municipalities showed that only 18 of the country’s 278 municipalities are functioning properly while the rest are in a sorry mess.

This is underlined by the fact that at least 40 municipalities are currently under section 139 administration and others owe embattled power utility Eskom a joint estimated R36 billion. Auditor General Kimi Makwetu’s report in June 2019 highlighted municipalities’ noncompliance with regulations led to irregular expenditure of R62.6 billion during the 2017/18 financial year. This was an increase from R51 billion announced by the AG a year earlier.

The announcement by Ramaphosa is perhaps a signal he is finally setting his plan to get