DA candidates vow to fix water, billing, and finances in three major cities

Cilliers Brink is campaigning on clean government and reliable water in Tshwane. In Johannesburg, Helen Zille promises to end waste and rebuild infrastructure. In Ekurhuleni, Khathutshelo Rasilingwane has flagged billing failures and merit-based appointments. Three cities, three candidates, one pitch: stabilise finances, ring-fence utility income, repair infrastructure and bring in private capital where needed.

That pitch comes from the Democratic Alliance’s local government election manifesto, launched on Saturday. DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis says transparent tender processes will govern private partnerships in municipalities the party wins after the November 4 elections. The manifesto promises professionally managed utilities, performance-based contracts, and private companies that will finance, build, operate and maintain the infrastructure that residents depend on daily.

The proposal sounds modern and business-oriented. It also sounds remarkably similar to what the ANC has been promising and failing to deliver for years. The ANC’s 2021 manifesto promised professional municipalities, reliable services and partnerships with business. Operation Vulindlela, the government’s reform programme, is already promoting professionally managed utilities, private-sector participation and ring-fenced municipal trading revenue. The ANC’s 2026 manifesto had not been published when the DA launched its own, but the pattern is clear: the DA is not proposing a radically different municipal economic model. It is offering the same instruments the ANC has already endorsed, private operators, tenders, ring-fenced income, outside expertise. The difference, the DA argues, is that it will administer them more honestly. Same plumbing, different plumber.

That does not necessarily make it bad policy. Most of South Africa’s municipalities genuinely need more capital and technical expertise than they possess. Water systems are leaking, electricity networks are failing and sewage plants are collapsing after years of cadre deployment and the departure of experienced engineers. The central question is whether private participation helps municipalities regain capacity or makes them permanently dependent on contractors.

The DA is not opposed to tenders; no governing party can be. The constitution requires state procurement to be fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective. Critics say the DA seeks to replace black tenderpreneurs with white companies. The party is campaigning against race-based procurement, proposing a model based on economic disadvantage, job creation and value for money instead. In an economy where capital and technical capacity remain disproportionately white-owned, dropping race-conscious preferences could redirect municipal spending that way while being presented as colour-blind professionalism. Yet a DA council cannot simply rewrite national law. Until BEE legislation changes through amendment or court challenge, its procurement remains bound by the constitution, procurement law and the Municipal Finance Management Act.

What the DA says it opposes is tenderpreneurship: inflated contracts for political allies, specifications written for preferred bidders and payment for work never completed. Its manifesto promises to publish tender awards, contract prices and premiums paid above the lowest qualifying bid, alongside strict performance agreements. These are welcome commitments. Transparency alone, though, does not make a contract affordable or a contractor competent.

Look at Johannesburg. The city already relies heavily on private companies, yet its infrastructure keeps deteriorating. Johannesburg Water awarded a R263m contract to two little-known companies to supply 70 water tankers. An amaBhungane investigation raised questions about the bidders’ addresses and price comparisons, and the high court declared the tender invalid, a ruling Johannesburg Water is appealing. The tanker economy shows the danger of outsourcing municipal failure. When companies earn millions delivering emergency water, broken pipes and empty reservoirs become commercially valuable. The contractor profits because the system does not work. Failure becomes a business model.

This is the central weakness in the DA’s manifesto. Promising a partnership with the private sector is easy; ensuring that the municipality and the resident get value for money is much harder. A genuine partnership transfers real financial and operational risk to the private company, which should be paid for outcomes, not for supplying equipment, personnel or hours. A badly constructed one is merely a bigger, longer tender, capable of locking a municipality into inflated prices and dependence on a monopoly provider for decades. The DA’s pre-approved supplier panels also deserve scrutiny. They can cut delays by letting municipalities pick from a vetted list, but can also restrict competition and create a protected circle of repeat winners. A panel is not an anticorruption mechanism; it is only as clean as the officials who run it.

Hill-Lewis’s immediate challenge is Gauteng, where the DA wants to take Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni. The party has governed all three metros before, usually in fragile coalitions, leading Tshwane for much of the period after 2016 and running unstable administrations in Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni after 2021. Coalition chaos disrupted those governments, but the DA must explain why its earlier terms left them no more resilient to leadership change and how its new partnerships differ from the outsourcing already consuming municipal budgets.

Meanwhile, the government of national unity is blurring ideological lines between the DA and the ANC, as analysis at https://www.financialmail.businessday.co.za/opinion/2026-08-10-real-politics-the-da-s-municipal-gamble-same-plumbing-new-plumber/ has noted. The ANC has moved towards private power generation and private investment in rail, ports and water infrastructure; the DA, with which it now shares national power, is embracing similar partnerships at municipal level. That does not necessarily mean the DA is falling for ANC policies. It may show both parties have accepted the scale of the crisis and arrived at the same limited range of solutions.

The real contest may not be between public provision and privatisation. It will be a contest over credibility. The ANC says it can renew itself and finally implement reforms promised for years; the DA says the same tools will work in cleaner, more capable hands. That is a persuasive offer. Whether the DA can stop its private partners from becoming the next tanker barons and tender millionaires is the question that will define whether its municipal rescue plan outlasts the one it has come to replace.