Declaring that the era of patronage, factional politics, and municipal looting is over, President Cyril Ramaphosa has called for the renewal of South Africa’s local government, emphasising its role as the essential engine of national development.

Speaking during the closing session of the National Council of Provinces’s (NCOP’s) ‘Taking Parliament to the People’ programme in Stilfontein, on Friday, Ramaphosa urged citizens to actively participate in the consultation process for the reviewed draft White Paper on Local Government, currently underway.

"Local government is critical in ensuring that people have water and sanitation, electricity, roads, clinics and community services," Ramaphosa said. "Our task is to make it work for the people. Not for vested interests.”

Following the official gazetting of the reviewed draft White Paper by Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa, the Presidency is pushing for massive structural reforms.

The review, which began in 2025, aims to modernise municipalities, fight corruption, and improve service delivery.

Ramaphosa warned against political leaders colluding with "corrupt" businesspeople to destroy infrastructure for private gain, particularly in water provision.

He said the review draft paper aimed to address “decades of confusion” between district and local municipalities, explaining that the new framework aimed to eliminate duplicate functions and clarify roles to stop municipalities from "blaming each other" for failures.

Intergovernmental coordination would become legally binding, in line with the Constitution, forcing different spheres of government to work together in solving local problems instead of operating in silos, he added.

Ramaphosa explained that the White Paper proposed a total overhaul of municipal billing and revenue collection, holding leaders to stricter account regarding expenditure.

He noted that the new reforms would also prioritise the professionalisation of municipal appointments and tackle the "treasonous" tendency of underspending allocated budgets.

"We are going to be focusing on digitisation and strengthening data systems that are able to facilitate and monitor service delivery," Ramaphosa promised.

He said municipal infrastructure could not be allowed to be deliberately ruined so that preferred private companies could take over critical functions such as providing water.

“For too long municipalities have gotten away with saying that they are committed to public participation because they placed an ad in a newspaper, had a public hearing or because they have a complaints line,” Ramaphosa said.

He sees meaningful public participation in local government as a structured partnership.

“We are going to be looking at the different ways in which all of society can play a more direct role in shaping how local government is administered. Our country has entered a new era of hope and promise. Our economy is recovering. Investors are increasingly seeing South Africa as a favourable place in which to do business,” he said.

ECONOMIC AXIS

Meanwhile, he declared that local government would serve as the critical enabler of the most ambitious infrastructure build programme in South Africa’s history.

Ramaphosa confirmed that over the next three years, government will be investing R1-trillion to build energy, water, transportation, logistics, IT and essential other infrastructure.

He emphasised that for South Africa to successfully attract investment and create jobs, its municipalities must be “functional, reliable, and secure”.

He noted that investors were not only interested in national policy, but in whether they could bring their investments to areas with functioning basic services.

"Local government doesn’t just support development. It is the axis on which our entire economy turns," Ramaphosa said, acknowledging that the current state of many municipalities was a direct threat to jobs and investment.

He stated that government could not simply "paper over the cracks".

"We have to fundamentally transform the way local government works and how it is structured. The structures developed in the past may not serve us anymore," Ramaphosa stated.