South Africans are tired of being punished for government failure they did not create

South Africans are not unreasonable people. They understand that services cost money. They understand that infrastructure must be maintained. They understand that municipalities, utilities and government departments need revenue to function.

But what people no longer accept is being asked to pay more and more while receiving less and less.

Residents pay their municipal bills. Businesses pay their electricity and water accounts. Ratepayers fund the system month after month. Yet they are rewarded with potholes, sewage spills, water outages, collapsing substations, broken traffic lights, billing chaos and municipalities that somehow still cannot pay Eskom, water boards or service providers.

This is the heart of the crisis: ordinary people are being forced to carry the cost of government failure.

Tariff increases have become the default answer to every problem. When municipalities mismanage revenue, residents must pay more. When infrastructure is not maintained, residents must pay more. When corruption, wasteful expenditure and poor planning hollow out the state, residents must pay more. When unions and municipalities agree on above-inflation increases, regardless of a municipality’s financial status, municipal customers must pay more. When officials fail to do their jobs, the public is told to tighten its belt.

But there is very little evidence that the government is tightening its own.

Across the country, we see the same pattern. Revenue is collected for electricity, water, sanitation and rates, but the money does not always go where it should. Critical service revenue is too often absorbed into general municipal cash-flow crises, while essential creditors go unpaid and infrastructure backlogs grow.

The result is predictable: debt increases, services deteriorate and residents are punished through higher tariffs, interruptions and declining quality of life.

This is not sustainable.

If a household collects money for electricity but spends it elsewhere, the lights go off. If a business fails to pay its suppliers, it collapses. But when municipalities do the same, the response is often another bailout, another tariff hike, another loan, another payment arrangement and another excuse.

That is not accountability. That is a transfer of failure from government to the public.

The people are tired of paying for failure they did not create.

They are tired of being told there is no money while billions are lost to irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure. They are tired of seeing consultants paid to do work that municipal officials are already employed to do. They are tired of political office bearers blaming historical problems while refusing to take responsibility for current decisions and poor performance. They are tired of public entities hiding behind process while residents live with the consequences. They are tired of poorly performing municipal office bearers who waste their time and treat them poorly.

Most of all, people are tired of a system where there are always consequences for the people, but rarely consequences for those in power.

Accountability cannot stop at the debt. It must extend to the people who managed the revenue, approved the spending, ignored the warnings and allowed the crisis to grow. It must reach officials, executives, boards, municipal managers, CFOs, mayors and political office bearers where they failed in their duties.

South Africa does not need more excuses. It needs consequence management.

That means electricity and water revenue must be ringfenced so that money collected for essential services is used first to pay for those services. It means monthly public reporting on debt repayment and payment flows. It means independent monitoring where municipalities have shown they cannot be trusted to manage revenue responsibly. It means proper metering audits, action against illegal connections and theft, and transparent agreements between municipalities and entities such as Eskom.

It also means professionalising local government. Municipalities cannot be treated as political deployment centres while residents pay for, and expect, world-class service delivery. Competence must matter. Integrity must matter. Performance must matter. People who cannot manage public money should not be managing public institutions.

South Africans are not asking for miracles. They are asking for the basics: clean water, reliable electricity, safe roads, working infrastructure, honest billing and leaders who take responsibility. They are asking for efficient, productive municipal staff who treat customers with friendliness, dignity and respect.

The tragedy is that many of these basics are already paid for.

The money is collected. The tariffs are increased. The budgets are approved. The staff are employed. The consultants are paid. The plans are written. Yet the outcome for residents continues to deteriorate.

That is why trust has collapsed.

The government cannot rebuild trust by demanding more from citizens while demanding nothing from itself. It cannot ask residents to accept another increase without showing where the previous money went. It cannot keep blaming communities for non-payment while ignoring the many residents and businesses who have paid faithfully and still receive failing services.

The social contract is breaking because the public is paying, but the government is not delivering.

This is why civil society, residents, businesses and communities must continue to demand transparency and accountability. We must insist that public money follows public purpose. We must insist that service revenue is protected. We must insist that failed leadership has consequences. And we must use every democratic tool available to demand better, including public participation, legal processes, oversight mechanisms and the vote.

Because ultimately, this is not only a financial crisis. It is a governance crisis.

South Africa will not fix its municipalities, utilities or public finances by making honest residents pay endlessly for dishonest or incompetent leadership. We will fix them when public institutions are forced to manage money properly, deliver quality services honestly and answer to the people who fund them.

The people have paid.

Now the government must account. DM