THE MINIMUM LEGAL THRESHOLD IS NOT A GOVERNING STANDARD
Democracy should not belong only to people with degrees, wealth, professional titles or access to political networks.
Public office must remain open to ordinary citizens.
But openness creates a difficult distinction that South Africa cannot afford to ignore ahead of its local government elections:
Being eligible to serve is not the same as being ready to govern.
The Constitution protects broad democratic participation. Every citizen qualified to vote for a municipal council is generally eligible to become a member of that council, subject to specific disqualifications. The Electoral Commission similarly explains that eligible citizens may contest municipal elections through political parties or, in ward contests, as independent candidates.
That threshold is deliberately accessible.
It should be.
Requiring candidates to possess university degrees or elite professional credentials would exclude millions of citizens whose knowledge, leadership and legitimacy were built outside formal institutions.
The danger begins when political parties mistake the democratic minimum for a sufficient standard of readiness.
A MUNICIPALITY IS NOT A POPULARITY CONTEST
Public recognition has political value.
A familiar candidate may communicate well, mobilise supporters, understand a community’s frustrations and make politics feel less remote. Visibility does not automatically make someone incapable of governing.
But it does not establish competence either.
Municipal leadership requires decisions about budgets, infrastructure, procurement, staffing, debt, water, electricity, waste, roads, public safety and long-term planning.
The candidate is not applying merely to become a public representative.
They are seeking influence over the institutions through which citizens experience government every day.
This is why the distinction between popularity and capacity matters.
Capacity is not simply technical knowledge. It includes understanding the mandate, weighing competing needs, making decisions with incomplete resources, explaining those decisions and accepting responsibility when the outcome is unpopular.
A campaign can be built around personality.
A municipality cannot be managed by personality alone.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT IS WHERE RIGHTS BECOME REAL
National politics often dominates public attention.
Yet many of the state’s most visible promises are experienced locally.
A constitutional right may be written nationally, but its practical meaning is often encountered through:
· whether water reaches a household;
· whether refuse is collected;
· whether streets are safe and maintained;
· whether public parks can be used;
· whether infrastructure survives;
· whether a resident receives help from a functioning municipal office.
This gives councillors and municipal office-bearers enormous responsibility.
The office may be locally elected, but the consequences are deeply personal.
When a municipality fails, residents do not experience that failure as an abstract governance indicator. They experience it through dry taps, dark streets, broken roads, sewage, delayed projects and shrinking public spaces.
PARTIES ARE NOT ONLY CAMPAIGN MACHINES
Political parties frequently speak about finding electable candidates.
They should speak just as seriously about developing governable ones.
A party cannot absolve itself after a candidate meets the legal criteria and wins enough votes. Candidate selection is only the beginning of its responsibility.
Parties should be able to show how representatives are prepared to:
· understand municipal law and finance;
· distinguish party interests from public duties;
· oversee administrators without interfering unlawfully;
· identify conflicts of interest;
· tolerate opposition;
· manage constituency work;
· resist factional pressure;
· account for public money;
· communicate difficult decisions honestly.
This is not an argument for closing politics to people without experience.
It is an argument for building experience before failure becomes the public’s burden.
Training should also not be treated as a once-off induction after election day. Representatives need continuing education, ethical support, policy expertise and meaningful consequences when they fail the standards attached to office.
THE CONSEQUENCES ARE ALREADY VISIBLE
The 2026 local government elections are scheduled for Wednesday, 4 November.
Voters will make their decisions while many municipalities face severe financial pressure.
National Treasury has withheld funding from 69 municipalities across all nine provinces. The affected municipalities reported by eNCA include Johannesburg, Buffalo City, Nelson Mandela Bay and Mangaung. Treasury says the intervention is intended to enforce responsible management of public money, while further reporting has linked the decision to failures including money deducted from municipal workers but not paid into pension funds.
These are not conditions in which candidate selection can be reduced to name recognition.
A financially distressed municipality requires leaders able to understand what has gone wrong, distinguish political promises from affordable plans and oversee recovery without sacrificing essential services.
The lower the barrier to democratic participation, the stronger the preparation after entry must become.
VOTERS NEED PROOF, NOT ONLY PROMISES
Citizens do not need to reject every celebrity, broadcaster, activist or public personality who enters politics.
They need to ask the same questions of every candidate, regardless of fame:
What have you led?
What decisions have you owned?
What do you understand about the municipality’s finances?
How will you manage officials who know more about the institution than you do?
What will you do when party instructions conflict with the interests of residents?
How will you respond when resources cannot satisfy every demand?
What evidence shows that you can turn public trust into public value?
The answer cannot simply be that a candidate meets the minimum criteria.
The minimum protects the right to participate.
It does not guarantee the ability to govern.
South Africa should defend both principles at once: politics must remain open to ordinary citizens, and the people entrusted with municipalities must be prepared for the extraordinary responsibility that follows.
Because eligibility gets a candidate onto the ballot.
Readiness determines what happens after the votes are counted.
Listen to SA Explained with Naledi Moleo and Nqaba Mabeca.
- SA Explained with Naledi Moleo and Nqaba Mabece
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