The drafters of our constitution made provisions, under section 152, that one of the objectives of local government was “…to ensure the provision of services to communities... to promote a safe and healthy environment”.

They did so in good faith that elected public representatives, ably supported by professional administrators in municipalities, would lead clean governments that were committed to providing basic services like water, sewerage and electricity reticulation.

However, the lived experiences of most South Africans over the past 20 years have been nothing short of tragic. Not only has the ANC run most municipalities into the ground, the coalitions it has formed with the EFF and other small parties after the 2021 local government elections have collapsed service delivery.

Nowhere is this dysfunction more visible than in the corrupt ANC-PA coalition government in Emfuleni municipality. Recently, it was reported that the municipality had issued a warning to residents advising them not to drink tap water because it was contaminated with sewage.

Blocked sewer manholes, covering old and collapsing pipelines, were blamed for the contamination that led to the shutdown of the water supply to the community of Greater Evaton.

Wasteful expenditure has become endemic, as shown in a recent case where it was revealed that the municipality had spent over R55m on an attorney to contest the payment of R739,551.42 to a former employee.

Not withstanding the exorbitant legal fees, Emfuleni has a fully capacitated legal unit that draws salaries from the municipality but is constantly bypassed in favour of external service providers.

In another extreme case of the parasitic culture that has become entrenched in Emfuleni, in November 2023, the DA exposed how R500m was spent on employee overtime with no corresponding improvement in the provision of water, solid waste and refuse removal services.

A reply to a DA question in the provincial legislature revealed that the municipality has paid water contractors over R65m for water tankers to supply residents over the past three years.

Since being placed under administration in 2018, th emunicipality has struggled to fix its bulk water treatment plant. Emfuleni’s dysfunction is a result of the egregious violation of the social contract envisioned in section 152 of the constitution by the ANC-PA coalition.

According to Stats SA’s non-financial census of municipalities, for the year ended 30 June 2022, DA governments had the highest proportion of consumer units that benefit from free basic water, sewage and sanitation services.

DA governments offer the best model of the type of government they had in mind when they stipulated that a municipality must “structure and manage its administration and budgeting and planning processes to give priority to the basic needs of the community, and to promote the social and economic development of the community”.

In this election, voters have a choice to either vote for ANC coalitions of corruption or a DA government that will restore the social contract that has been violated by the ANC government.

■ Malatsi is DA spokesperson