Staff Reporter
The Democratic Alliance has called on opposition parties in eThekwini to unite against the municipality’s 2026/27 budget, saying reduced tariff increases announced by the ANC still place an unaffordable burden on residents.
The budget is set to be tabled for adoption at a full council meeting on Friday.
“The DA will not vote in support of the draft eThekwini budget, and any party that genuinely has the best interests of the residents and ratepayers of this city at heart should do the same,” DA eThekwini caucus leader Thabani Mthethwa said in a statement on Thursday.
The municipality announced the R74.7 billion draft budget in March, consisting of an operating budget of R68.8 billion and a capital budget of R5.9 billion.
Mayor Cyril Xaba said it was aimed at strengthening service delivery and upgrading infrastructure.
The original draft proposed increases of 10.5% for electricity, 15% for domestic water, 16% for non-domestic water, 13% for domestic sanitation, 14% for non-domestic sanitation and 13% for refuse removal.
Mthethwa said that after “sustained pressure from the DA”, the ANC had reduced the proposed increases to 9% for electricity, 12% for domestic water, 13% for non-domestic water, 8% for domestic sanitation, 9% for non-domestic sanitation and 9.5% for refuse removal.
“The DA remains firmly opposed to these tariff increases, despite the ANC’s last-minute attempts to soften the blow and present itself as responsive to residents’ concerns,” he said.
“In a city where residents endure electricity outages lasting up to three days at a time, where depots are under-resourced and overburdened, and where infrastructure failures are becoming the norm, expecting residents to pay more for worsening services amounts to exploitation.”
The budget fight comes in a hung council where the ANC remains the largest party, and runs the city government with an ANC, IFP, EFF coalition.
The ANC in the city has said the budget is pro-poor, and mandated its councillors to support it, saying it accelerates service delivery and reduces pressure on ratepayers and small businesses.
But opposition parties and civic groups have said that the revised tariffs remain too high in a city where many residents say they are already paying for services they do not receive.
The IFP, during earlier debate on the draft, said residents were struggling to meet municipal obligations because of “genuine hardship” and warned against tariff increases while food prices and basic living costs remained unaffordable.
Minority Front councillor Sunitha Maharaj also said taking the budget to residents with the proposed increases would make people “more disillusioned and angry”.
Mthethwa said eThekwini’s finances were “in crisis”, given unpaid plumbing contractors, ageing and poorly maintained infrastructure, high levels of non-revenue water, billions in uncollected debt, and rising unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
“Plumbing contractors remain unpaid for months on end and are often forced to down tools,” Mthethwa said.
“The city continues buying time by claiming plumbers are being paid, while contractors themselves dispute these claims. The reality is that they are waiting for the new financial year and the new budget cycle before payments can be processed. Plumbers have not been paid because the municipality simply does not have the money.”
Water losses in the city are currently 54.35%, costing the city billions annually. Irregular expenditure had risen to more than R1.48 billion, and uncollected debt had increased by almost R1 billion and now exceeded R45.4 billion.
“We welcome the growing number of voices opposing the municipality’s new budget because it strengthens resistance against a budget that places even greater pressure on already struggling residents,” Mthethwa said.
Mthethwa accused city leadership of trying to limit public opposition to the budget.
“Holding public participation meetings tens of kilometres away from affected communities, during working hours and on weekdays, appeared to be yet another attempt by the ANC-IFP-EFF coalition to exclude residents from meaningful participation and reduce public consultation to a mere tick-box exercise,” he said.
He said the water crisis remained severe in Phoenix, Chatsworth, Inanda, Ntuzuma, Umlazi, Tongaat, Verulam and Athlone Park, where communities had experienced inconsistent running water for years.
“Most recently, Athlone Park spent weeks without water and with little to no communication from municipal officials, causing immense frustration for residents.”
Mthethwa said communities including Mzinyathi, Ehlanzeni and eNgonyameni were now entirely reliant on water tankers, forcing residents to choose between going to work and waiting for water deliveries that might not arrive.
“Residents cannot plan their lives because many are forced to choose between going to work or waiting for a tanker, without knowing when it will arrive. In some cases, tankers do not arrive for an entire week,” he said.
“Almost every community has water leaks that remain unresolved for weeks, and in many cases, months.”
He said those conditions alone were enough to reject the tariff increases.
“Residents cannot be expected to pay more for services they barely receive.”
Mthethwa also said the budget could not be relied on because funds were often reprioritised within months from one project to another, which he said showed poor planning.
“A municipality cannot decide how to spend public money as it goes along,” he said.
He cited incomplete housing projects and flood victims who remain without permanent housing years after the disasters as examples of poor financial planning.
The DA said the Inanda Namibia Stop 8 Housing Project was “a prime example”, saying that after DA intervention only one of four phases had been completed. The project was initially meant to take four years, but seven years and more than R140 million later, Mthethwa said, it remained far from completion.
The party said Friday’s vote would test whether opposition parties were prepared to act together against the ANC in the interests of residents.
“For the first time in eThekwini’s history, opposition parties united at last month’s full Council sitting to defeat the ANC on the proposed purchase of new municipal vehicles,” Mthethwa said.
“This budget vote presents another opportunity for opposition parties to unite against the ANC and stand with the residents of eThekwini.”
INSIDE METROS
