BLOEMFONTEIN – The Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Velenkosini Hlabisa, has laid bare the depth of the Free State’s municipal crisis in parliament.
Of the 38 municipalities nationally identified as distressed in August, eight are in the Free State: Mangaung, Mafube, Tokologo, Kopanong, Matjhabeng, Nala, Masilonyana and Ngwathe. All eight are subject to ongoing constitutional interventions.
IOL reports Hlabisa was responding to parliamentary questions from IFP MP Alco Ngobese, who asked about the number of affected municipalities and the interventions undertaken by his department.
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Hlabisa stated while 38 municipalities are distressed, 37 were subject to ongoing interventions in terms of section 139 of the Constitution.
Among the municipalities are four in the Western Cape, which include Beaufort West, Kannaland, Garden Route and Theewaterskloof.
KwaZulu-Natal has only Impendle whilst Gauteng has Emfuleni and Merafong.
There are eight others in the Free State including Mangaung, five in the Eastern Cape, one in Limpopo, five in Mpumalanga, eight in North West, and three in Northern Cape.
Hlabisa said seven of the 38 distressed municipalities recorded improvements in their audit outcomes during the 2024/25 audit cycle, whilst 28 remained unchanged and two regressed.
The DA Spokesperson for CoGTA in the Free State Legislature, David Mc Kay, says the DA has already acted where the government has repeatedly failed to deliver consequences. The party laid criminal charges against five municipal managers across four Free State municipalities, namely Masilonyana, Nketoana, Mohokare, and Maluti-a-Phofung, for financial management failures identified in the Auditor-General’s findings. The charges are being pursued under section 173(1) of the Municipal Finance Management Act, which covers offences such as gross negligence and material accounting irregularities.
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These eight municipalities are among the 16 Free State municipalities whose equitable-share allocations were temporarily withheld due to serious financial and compliance failures.
The official record documents deficits, poor revenue collection, weak internal controls, persistent legislative non-compliance, infrastructure failures, governance collapse and chronic service-delivery failures.
In a news statement on Sunday, Mc Kay said the DA has consistently brought these failures into the public domain, demanded consequence management and pursued accountability for officials who have presided over years of dysfunction. “We have persistently called for professional municipal administrations, merit-based appointments and an end to political protection for officials who fail communities.”
