-Staff Writer | 25, Tue Nov 2025
The Democratic Alliance (DA) scathing against Free State Government as it calls for the Provincial Government led by Premier, Maqueen Letsoha-Mathae, to be held accountable for what it has termed as the total collapse of municipalities across the province.
The party has submitted a motion in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) demanding urgent intervention and consequence management, warning that the provincial government has failed in its constitutional duties to support and oversee municipalities.
According to DA NCOP Spokesperson on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Dr Igor Scheurkogel, Free State municipalities are “in free fall”, with rivers turned into “open sewers”, uncollected waste piling up in streets, chronic water outages, and catastrophic financial mismanagement.
During the NCOP’s 2025 Provincial Week, the Auditor-General(AG) Tsakani Maluleke’s recent report on municipalities confirmed that not a single municipality in the Free State received a clean audit.
Municipalities as the troubled Bloemfontein based Mangaung, Theunissen based Masilonyana, Welkom based Matjabeng, Trompsburg based Kopanong amongst others featured prominently in her report.
Municipalities such as Kopanong and Masilonyana have the level of services to residents collapse with no accountability. This as since led to the Department of National Treasury threaning to cut funding to them due to missuse of funds meant for basic services.
Scheurkogel said this widespread breakdown is not due to constitutional weaknesses but stems from a lack of political will and the absence of consequences for municipal officials who fail to perform.
He lambasted the provincial Cogta for not using the legislative tools available in the Municipal Systems Act and the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) to enforce accountability or provide proper support.
“The DA’s motion highlights several failures by the provincial government, including the inability to fill key municipal posts within six months, outdated indigent registers, and an alarmingly low average revenue collection rate of 38%. The province has also failed to produce Municipal Systems Act Section 47 performance reports — a legally required assessment of municipal performance that guides provincial intervention. Without these reports, there is no credible diagnosis of why municipalities fail,” Scheurkogel said.
In his scathing letter Scheurkogel highlight that the consequences are severe and that municipalities continue to submit poor-quality financial statements, ignore irregular expenditure, defy court orders, and accumulate massive debts to water boards and Eskom.
“National Treasury has already withheld transfers as Free State municipalities collectively owe R24.8 billion for water services alone.Environmental and public health concerns are mounting. Municipalities such as Mafube, Matjhabeng and Kopanong are facing criminal cases for polluting rivers, while collapsed wastewater treatment plants allow untreated sewage to contaminate rivers and dams”
The DA accused the provincial CoGTA department of failing to develop adequate monitoring systems or capacity-building programmes, resulting in weak internal controls, poor performance reporting, and what the party calls a “culture of impunity” in ANC-run municipalities.
To address the crisis, the DA said it will continue pushing for reforms through its local structures.
These include implementing efficient billing systems, updating indigent registers, reducing wasteful expenditure, forming community partnerships, cutting excessive wage bills, professionalising municipal administrations, enforcing service-delivery-oriented bylaws, and ensuring merit-based appointments.
Scheurkogel said residents will ultimately have the power to choose change in the 2026 Local Government Elections.
“When you vote, remember that the current government has turned our rivers into sludge and left our municipalities bankrupt,” he said. “With accountable leadership and informed voters, the Free State can move from collapse to recovery.”
News Junction (Gold Standard)