DA slams Joburg’s R89.4bn budget as politically motivated:
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has accused the ruling coalition in the City of Johannesburg of allocating its budget to areas where it is most likely to get votes.
“It’s a political budget and it is just to ensure that they are putting money in areas where they know they are going to get more votes [going] to the current ruling coalition at the moment,” said the DA’s Johannesburg caucus leader, Belinda Echeozonjoku.
On Wednesday, Johannesburg Finance MMC Margaret Arnolds tabled a budget of R89.4 billion for the 2025–26 financial year, describing it as a “fully funded, pro-poor and pro-growth budget”.
The capital budget of R8.7 billion (R26.2 billion over the medium term) intentionally targets regions that were affected by spatial planning during apartheid, according to the statement. This includes Alexandra, Diepsloot, Kaalfontein, Orange Farm and Lenasia South.
Echeozonjoku said one of the concerns for the DA was that huge amounts were being allocated to Region E, under which Alexandra township falls, but not much improvement had taken place there.
“Massive money is spent in Alex, you go to Alex today, do you see any of that money making a difference? We do not see where the money is going,” she said.
Speaking to journalists after the council seating, Arnolds said: “The budget reflects our resolve to drive infrastructure led-growth, accelerated service delivery and restore long-term financial sustainability; with a projected operating surplus of R4.1 billion and a capital allocation of R8.7 billion for this year alone [and] growing to R26.2 billion over the next three years.
“We are focusing our capital investment where they are needed most: revitalising the inner city … but also in different regions where we are deployed as MMC.”
The key revenue drivers for this year include electricity, for which R25.6 billion is allocated, R20 billion for water and wastewater, R18.1 billion for property rates, R3.3 billion for refuse removal and R4.57 billion for the national fuel levy, according to budget documents.
Referring to the underdeveloped regions, Arnolds said: We’ve had lots of service backlogs, it’s historical, and in the underserved areas. We know that Diepsloot, Orange Farm, Lenasia South and Kaalfontein are basically the step-children of the City of Johannesburg and we are going to fix that.”
Echeozonjoku said the city is allocating money to townships or informal settlements without saying what their plan is to formalise those settlements.
“It means you are throwing money into an area that is not formalised. Are you able to see the stand number? Are you able to collect revenue for prepaid meters and things like that?
“How are you going to be able to collect from those areas? You are opening the city up to challenges of illegal connection once again if you are not formalising those informal settlements.
“We are not happy with the allocations that have been done without a proper plan on how to actually collect revenue.”
She added that a lot of money has been taken from transport and the DA.
“We are not happy with that either. The tariffs increase; we felt that there’s a lot of money that could have been redirected as well.”
A sum of R400 million has been set aside for the Johannesburg Roads Agency to resurface roads.
Auditor-general exposes municipal meltdown:
Auditor general Tsakani Maluleke has delivered a damning indictment on the state of municipal finances and lack of accountability, manifested in crumbling service delivery.
This is despite an uptick in the number of clean audit reports for the 2023-24 financial year.
Maluleke painted a dire picture of the widespread poor quality of financial reporting and mismanagement in a briefing to parliament’s cooperative governance portfolio committee on local government audit outcomes for the financial year.
“The good news is that we are back to 41 clean audits [out of 275 municipalities], which is where we started back in 2021. So we’re no more at the 34 that I talked about last year. However, that makes up 15% of the municipalities across the country,” she said.
“It’s great that we are reversing this trend around disclaimers of audit opinion. However, the state of financial and performance management disciplines in local government still leaves much to be desired, and so the story, in many ways, is similar to what I would have shared before. I worry … that I will sound like a stuck record.”
Her office’s assessment underscored a profound crisis in municipal governance that extends far beyond mere administrative inefficiency.
She said 14 municipalities received disclaimer audit opinions — when an auditor is unable to obtain sufficient audit evidence to form an opinion — while seven had adverse audit opinions, and 35 had qualified audit opinions — meaning the financial statements contained material misstatements in specific amounts, or there was insufficient evidence to conclude that specific amounts included in the statements were not materially misstated.
Ninety-nine municipalities had unqualified opinions and 41 municipalities achieved clean audits.
Maluleke said the metropolitan landscape was particularly alarming.
“The eight metros across the country look after half of the expenditure budget for local government. They look after service delivery that affects 46% of households across the country. Their budgets are quite significant,” she said.
“They sit in the centres of economic activity, and so, given the scale of their operations, the complexity thereof, but also the resources that they manage and even their location, they should have no difficulty attracting the skills that they need to run their environment.
“Unfortunately, out of the eight, we’ve got only one clean audit, which is the City of Cape Town. It was the only clean audit last year as well.”
Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg and eThekwini were the only metros to achieve unqualified audits with findings.
Maluleke’s office was also concerned about the quality of financial statements of the big metros and municipalities, noting that when the audit started only 63 out of 275 municipalities provided quality financial statements.
“By the time we finished, we managed to get 140 credible financial statements through corrections during the audit process,” she said.
“The City of Joburg didn’t give us quality financial statements when we began our audit. Now that’s a big city, the biggest in the country, the biggest on the continent. There should be no difficulty in ensuring that you’ve got the skills and the capability to do what you’re supposed to do, just on compiling financial statements.”
The audit exposed shocking institutional decay across infrastructure projects.
“We selected projects mostly in the metros and in those that have disclaimers of audit opinion. We found that the majority of projects had problems — 77% of the projects we visited had problems. Either they were delayed, there was poor quality work and then we also identified matters around the inadequate maintenance of infrastructure,” she said.
“The reason this exists, in our view, is that even if performance agreements are done as a tick-box exercise, they are not monitored. Contractors are appointed poorly through a procurement process that is not in compliance with the law and one that does not lead to the best decision. So the contractor that’s appointed is one that’s not equal to the task, then they are not managed — contract management capability is not there.
“The municipality doesn’t have employees within it that have a set of standard operating procedures, a set of disciplines and even a set of skills to monitor the performance of these contractors, and we’re seeing even once they’ve seen problems with the performance of the contractor, they don’t hold them accountable.
“Other than the municipalities that have got clean audits, you’ve got the majority of municipalities with material compliance findings, mostly in the area of procurement and contract management. In a nutshell, it tells us that we do not yet have a culture, a state of control, procedures and even accounting mechanisms.
“Metros are not any better. And given their significant budgets, one would have thought that this area of procurement would enjoy tremendous attention by the people that hold the purse.”
Buffalo City’s engineering crisis epitomised municipal dysfunction, the auditor general said, telling MPs: “They have had a vacancy for district engineer responsible for electricity for 80 months — that’s six years and eight months.”
An identical vacancy for sanitation engineering had remained unfilled for 24 months.
Maluleke said the financial mismanagement is systemic and deeply entrenched.
“This year 219 municipalities spent together R1.47 billion on consultants purely for the purpose of helping them compile financial statements. Last year we reported R1.37 billion so the number is not really changing.
“This is when there are CFOs [chief financial officers] in place and there are finance functions that are populated with people that have been appointed. We also note that municipalities that get disclaimers of opinion also still spend on consultants on average R6 million.
“Municipalities with adverse findings also spend on consultants. The ones with qualified audits also spend on consultants. It tells us then that the key question is: why is it that even when there’s consultants being appointed, we still get bad quality submissions?”
She said her office had been asking this question for the past 10 years.
“The answer is that in most instances, the work of the consultant is not being reviewed. They say, well, there’s 2% [of cases] where the consultants didn’t deliver. But much of the problem is either consultants are appointed late, the underlying documents are not available or that their work is not being managed properly by the people that appointed them,” she said.
“What it tells you is that you’ve got CFOs and finance staff in place. They appoint consultants every year, and then once the consultant is there, they basically leave their desks. And so the consultant must engage with the auditors, which, in our view, tells a story about the culture and discipline more than even skills.”
“There is an element where the people under the CFO, there are some who are appointed and don’t have the skill to do the basics. However, much of the problem, we believe in local government, especially in this area of overusing consultants, relates to discipline.”
Municipal debt continues to spiral out of control as many municipalities approve unfunded budgets.
“We see unauthorised expenditure, meaning that where you’ve got expenditure levels approved, people are spending beyond that … And of course, that then compromises the financial health of those municipalities. Many ended up with a deficit situation, and many have got major creditors that they don’t pay, such as Eskom and the water boards,” said Maluleke.
She said suppliers and creditors to municipalities were waiting 286 days on average to receive money due to them, because cash flow had become very tight across many municipalities. Many of the suppliers then charged interest and penalties, much of which ended up as fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
The treasury’s Eskom debt relief programme aimed at helping municipalities enter into a settlement arrangement with the power utility had failed.
“It’s not working — 84% of the municipalities that participate in that programme are not complying with the conditions that they subscribed to. Again, in many instances, that’s a discipline issue,” Maluleke told members of parliament.
The auditor general’s report noted that cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) MECs, the minister and provincial legislatures were not doing their jobs in overseeing municipalities.
“The Municipal Systems Act provides that the MEC of Cogta must compile a report that analyses the performance of each municipality and that report must include remedial action that the MEC or municipality is undertaking and provide a report to provincial legislature every year on how municipality is responding,” Maluleke said.
“We have found those reports are either not done or if they are done they are done late; they are also either not tabled in the legislature and if tabled they are not dealt with in the legislature.
“We believe wholeheartedly that if MEC did their part they would not be lurching from crisis to crisis and if the legislature played their part they wouldn’t be waiting for the AG to say there is a disclaimer here, they would be monitoring these movements as a matter of course.”
She said the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs’s compilation report was often not done or done late.
“We have to get every single player in the ecosystem of accountability doing their part otherwise we will not arrest the decline of local government,” Maluleke said.
Clean energy must extend beyond megawatts and minerals:
As Africa enters a critical decade of energy development and industrialisation, the demand for reliable power, sustainable infrastructure and clean energy sources is reshaping the investment landscape. At the same time, the imperative to transition responsibly — without infringing on the rights of people — is more urgent than ever.
Business and Human Rights (BHR) offers a framework for managing this tension. Rooted in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, it sets out how businesses should respect human rights throughout their operations and supply chains and how states must protect those rights through regulation, enforcement and access to remedy.
For energy stakeholders — governments, investors, developers and people — BHR is no longer a peripheral concern. It is a core driver of responsible growth, risk management and legitimacy in a rapidly evolving global and African energy ecosystem.
BHR is anchored in three foundational pillars of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights:
- The state duty to protect human rights through policies, regulation and enforcement;
- The corporate responsibility to respect human rights by, among other things, conducting human rights due diligence; and
- Access to remedy for individuals and communities affected by business-related harm.
While once viewed as a voluntary commitment, these principles are increasingly being entrenched in binding legal frameworks. Recent instruments such as the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, Germany’s Supply Chain Act, and France’s Duty of Vigilance Law impose legal obligations on companies (including private enterprises) to identify, prevent and mitigate human rights and environmental risks across global value chains — and create liability for failing to do so.
Energy projects — whether related to oil, gas, renewables or critical mineral extraction — have a high human rights risk profile. Common risks include:
- Displacement of communities through land acquisition or infrastructure expansion;
- Adverse impacts on indigenous peoples’ cultural rights;
- Inadequate stakeholder engagement and lack of free, prior and informed consent;
- Labour rights violations in construction and mineral supply chains;
- Environmental degradation affecting water, health and livelihoods; and
- The use of excessive security forces or militarisation of project zones.
In an age of rising stakeholder activism, environmental, social, and governance litigation and reputational exposure, energy companies that fail to integrate BHR into their business models risk project delays, financing constraints, legal liability and community opposition. Conversely, companies that lead on BHR create resilience, de-risk investments and foster enduring partnerships with governments and communities.
Africa is poised to become one of the most dynamic frontiers for energy investment globally. The continent’s population is growing rapidly, with urbanisation and industrialisation driving exponential energy demand. At the same time, Africa is richly endowed with renewable resources and critical minerals that are essential to the global clean energy transition.
Energy investment opportunities include:
- Utility-scale solar, wind and hydro projects powering urban growth;
- Off-grid and mini-grid solutions bringing electricity to underserved rural areas;
- Cross-border energy infrastructure that links regional power pools and boosts energy security;
- Hydrogen, green ammonia and energy storage ventures attracting global partnerships; and
- Local beneficiation and value addition of critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium and graphite.
Countries such as South Africa, Kenya, Namibia, Egypt and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are already hubs of activity. Projects such as South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Procurement Programme, Kenya’s Lake Turkana Wind Power Project and Namibia’s ambitions in green hydrogen are reshaping the narrative. However, several of these projects have encountered friction regarding land use, community engagement and benefit sharing.
African energy development often intersects with vulnerable communities, informal land tenure, historical marginalisation and weak governance environments. Failing to address these dynamics invites risk; integrating BHR (the duty to respect human rights as distinct from state obligations) offers a pathway to do better. It can help companies build and maintain a social licence to operate; secure funding from development finance institutions and ethical lenders that mandate human rights due diligence; prevent litigation, protests and reputational harm and align with host government development goals and Africa’s Agenda 2063.
Agenda 2063 seeks to position Africa as a global powerhouse, one committed to inclusive and sustainable development. This mirrors the core language and aims of BHR.
For African states, embedding BHR into national energy policy enhances investor confidence and future-proofs infrastructure development. It also empowers governments to regulate more effectively and ensure that energy development is not only fast — but fair.
While Africa is on the cusp of major energy and infrastructure development, recent legal developments in the Global North offer cautionary insights:
- Shell vs Okpabi (UK): The UK Supreme Court confirmed that parent companies can be held liable for human rights harms caused by foreign subsidiaries. Although the case arose from alleged environmental damage in the Niger Delta, the precedent may apply well beyond that context.
- TotalEnergies climate litigation (France): NGOs sued the oil major under France’s Duty of Vigilance Law, which creates binding obligations on entities (including parent companies) to identify, prevent, mitigate and redress human rights and environmental impacts resulting from their own activities, as well as those companies under their control, subcontractors and suppliers.
- Fosen Wind Farm case (Norway): The Norwegian Supreme Court ruled that land expropriation and licensing for certain wind farms violated the rights of Sámi indigenous reindeer herders under international law, highlighting the importance of free, prior and informed consent, even in the context of renewable energy development.
These cases reinforce that the energy transition itself carries human rights risks. Whether in the Global North or South, renewable does not automatically mean responsible. If clean energy is built on compromised rights, it will not be sustainable in the long term.
By embedding Business and Human Rights into the DNA of energy projects, the continent can avoid replicating extractive models of the past and build an energy future that is clean, inclusive and equitable.
Pooja Dela and Dylan Cron are partners at Webber Wentzel.
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