A City Can Be Well Run and Still Leave People Behind
South Africa's local elections are testing more than political loyalty. They are exposing difficult questions about what good municipal government should deliver, who benefits from it, and how residents judge the results.
A city can collect revenue, maintain roads, manage its finances and earn relatively favourable ratings from residents while still struggling with crime, exclusion and unequal access to opportunity. Conversely, a city can promise a more inclusive future while failing to keep basic infrastructure functioning. Neither picture tells the whole story of good governance.
That tension emerges from the latest eNCA/MarkData local government election survey. In Cape Town, 60.5% of respondents described the municipality as either very well or averagely well run. In Johannesburg, the corresponding figure was 29.2%. These are perceptions reported by surveyed residents, rather than independent audits of municipal performance, but the contrast raises a larger question: what exactly should South Africans expect from a functioning city?
The difference between running a city and making it fair
Cape Town's proposed N2 security wall illustrates the complexity. The survey found that 69.6% of respondents supported the proposal, while 19.9% opposed it. The City has presented the project as a way to improve safety along a dangerous transport corridor. Critics have questioned its implications for communities living alongside the highway and whether it addresses the deeper conditions that allow violence to persist.
Both safety and the equitable use of public space are legitimate matters for public scrutiny. Residents travelling along the route should be able to reach their destinations without fear of attack. Residents living alongside it should also have a meaningful voice in decisions affecting their neighbourhoods. A physical barrier might address particular risks, but its effectiveness, consequences and alternatives must be examined rather than assumed.
The disagreement also reveals how difficult it can be to define public value. A project could be welcomed by road users and opposed by neighbouring communities without either response capturing every practical consequence. That is precisely why public consultation, clear evidence of effectiveness and transparent spending decisions matter.
The infrastructure question Johannesburg cannot escape
Johannesburg presents a different accountability problem. The survey found that 68.7% of respondents assessed the municipality as either not well run or extremely badly run. Residents' dissatisfaction is not itself a technical assessment of the city's infrastructure, but the underlying importance of water, electricity, roads and sewerage is difficult to overstate.
The Auditor-General has previously identified inadequate preventative maintenance and infrastructure-management failures affecting Johannesburg's water and
electricity services. Problems of this kind are rarely solved by changing a political slogan. They require functioning procurement, competent management, realistic budgets, preventive maintenance and sustained oversight.
A broken water pipe offers an unusually clear test of political accountability. Residents need to know who is responsible for the repair, whether funding exists, when the work will happen and how the city will prevent the same failure from recurring. When these answers are missing, distrust becomes a practical consequence of institutional weakness.
Beyond the politics of comparison
Cape Town and Johannesburg should not be reduced to a contest over which city is better. Their different survey results invite scrutiny of what each municipality delivers, but also of what remains unresolved. A comparatively favourable performance rating does not settle questions about spatial inequality. Widespread dissatisfaction does not, by itself, identify which political arrangement will repair a failing service.
South Africa's Constitution places local government within a democratic framework that requires accountable institutions and representation of communities. The real test comes between elections, when councils must turn political decisions into public services.
Better municipal government therefore needs two measures of success: whether the administration works, and whether the benefits and burdens of that administration are distributed fairly. Reliable water, safe roads, transparent spending and meaningful consultation are not competing ambitions. They are parts of the same public obligation.
The question facing South Africa's metros is not simply who controls the council chamber after the ballots are counted. It is whether residents can experience the difference in the streets, homes and neighbourhoods where local government is supposed to matter most.
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