Marking 30 years of democratic local government in South Africa

South Africa celebrated three decades of democracy in 2024. But this year, 2025, marks thirty years of democratic local government in the country. The first democratic local elections were held in November 1995 in seven provinces, and in the remaining two, KwaZulu Natal and the Western Cape, in May and June 1996. The early years of local democracy saw dramatic changes to municipal government, steered by the new 1996 Constitution, the 1998 White Paper on Local Government, and an array of new legislation including the Municipal Demarcation Act, Municipal Structures Act, Municipal Systems Act and Municipal Finance Management Act. However the impressive advances made in the early post-apartheid period have gradually given way to failure and malaise. South African local government is now widely recognised as being in crisis. Even the metros appear to be in a downward spiral of infrastructure decay and service delivery failure, financial weakness, corruption and depleted public trust. 

Of course, the state of crisis in local government has also summoned forth a range of remedial interventions and reforms. These include a programme of trading entity reform to address poor management of water and sanitation, electricity and solid waste; a review of the Local Government White Paper; and interventions led by the Presidency / Operation Vulindlela in eThekwini and the City of Johannesburg. 

To commemorate thirty years of local democracy, and to contribute to thinking around the current state and future prospects of local government, GCRO has started a campaign of research and policy support around the theme 30 Years of Democratic Local Government: Beyond Crisis, Towards Renewal. Our work here has already begun:

• Working with a number of other concerned academics we have contributed to an OpEd published in The Conversation Africa: Johannesburg’s problems can be solved – but it’s a long journey to fix South Africa’s economic powerhouse
• On 24 June we hosted a roundtable on the Discussion Document on the Review of the Local Government White Paper. See a news story on the lively debate here. We are preparing a submission to the review process based on the discussions
• Over the last few months we have been very involved in the Presidency-led intervention in Johannesburg, the Presidential Johannesburg Working Group (PJWG). GCRO staff have been playing a key role in both the Strategic Coordination Hub / Secretariat, and eight workstreams focused on various issues.

Work on our 30 Years of Democratic Local Government: Beyond Crisis, Towards Renewal campaign will continue through 2025/26, culminating in a symposium in November 2025. In the coming period we will be releasing:

• A GCRO DataBrief, Municipal Benchmarking Report: Findings from the GCRO’s Quality of life survey 7 (2023/24)
• A GCRO Provocation, Exploring possible interventions into dysfunctional local government in Gauteng
• An Interactive Visualisation comparing the finances of the City of Johannesburg and the City of Cape Town over the period 2008–2025
• A Rapid Research Paper on the State of Johannesburg that was prepared for the PJWG intervention
• A further Rapid Research Paper examining dimensions of the local government crisis in Gauteng. 

Please feel free to engage with us on the important issues covered in these reports, and keep an eye out for other forthcoming outputs and events.