LOCAL ELECTIONS TOUR: ‘We are moving backwards’ — Lekwa-Teemane’s collapse bleeds into residents’ daily lives

When a local municipality collapses, its failure does not simply sit on balance sheets or inside the pages of the Auditor-General’s reports. It bleeds into the streets, trickles into living rooms, and pools in the yards of ordinary residents. 

Driving through towns in the Lekwa-Teemane Local Municipality in North West, the consequences of government failures are laid bare. In the build-up to the election, Daily Maverick visited the area to see what adverse findings from the Auditor-General look like on the ground. 

In Bloemhof and Christiana, Lekwa-Teemane’s main towns, streets were riddled with potholes. Burst pipes leaked sewage across the roads and underserved communities complained of near-constant water outages, electricity cuts and unresponsive councillors.

“We are not stagnating; we are moving backwards,” Alutha Bles told Daily Maverick outside his house in Cloverdale, Bloemhof.

As a community activist who spends most of his time engaging with residents, Bles said he was the best placed person to talk about the issues affecting the area.

Bloemhof experienced constant water interruptions, he said. Often, water is available only in the morning and at night, leaving households without dry during the day. Interruptions can stretch to three or four days, and residents have to rely on buckets to manage their sanitation needs.

“The tankers used to come but then they just stopped,” Bles said.

In addition to the lack of service delivery, incomplete roads and stalled sewer upgrades will be top of mind when residents go to the polls on 4 November.

Election Tour

Ahead of the 4 November elections, Daily Maverick traversed the country visiting several municipalities that have been identified by the Auditor-General as being among the worst-run of South Africa’s 257 municipalities.

Open trenches and unanswered calls for accountability

Lekwa-Teemane’s draft Integrated Development Plan notes that its sanitation infrastructure was under considerable strain, particularly in Boitumelong and Cloverdale. Undersized pipes meant sewerage blockages were frequent.

The municipality responded to this with an outflow sewer line upgrade. In May 2025, Leekwa-Teemane mayor Sebang Motlhabi unveiled the project to Boitumelong and Cloverdale residents. A year later, it seemed to be stalled. At a section of the construction site near a school, reinforced concrete pipes stood beside deep, open trenches that were filled with stagnant water.

Bles said councillors seldom engaged with residents. There was a lack of communication and accountability regarding municipal projects, which left communities uncertain about when projects would be completed or who was responsible for resolving problems.

He had to intervene at the stalled project when residents complained about the deep trenches and piles of excavated soil near the school – which children were allegedly jumping over. After raising the issue with the school and mobilising others, he said sections of the site were closed off but some trenches remained open, posing a risk when it rained.

At the time, Bles told Daily Maverick he would only contest the local government elections if residents called on him to do so. Months later, he is a Ward 4 candidate for former ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule’s African Congress for Transformation (ACT).

Living with broken promises 

Ketebone Lehihi (39), who has spent her entire life in Boitumelong, the main township just five kilometres from Bloemhof, told Daily Maverick that the municipality’s failure to complete service delivery projects has made her disillusioned about the power of her vote.

One stalled project in particular was affecting her family’s quality of life, she said. 

In 2019, the municipality decided to upgrade sections of the township by installing paved roads and stormwater drains. The upgrade was meant to improve residents’ lives, but instead it created a whole host of problems.

Standing in her waterlogged yard, Lehihi told Daily Maverick that when it rained, water would run from the street onto her property and sometimes even into her house. North West’s largely flat landscape and the almost non-existent stormwater drainage system in Boitumelong meant that the family had been living in those conditions since December 2025.

They have had to improvise, making an elevated footpath from discarded bricks, to get across the yard without getting wet.

“We don’t live nicely,” Lehihi said. “We constantly catch the flu, and the children’s school books are damaged by the water coming into the house. The municipality just watches us living like this. It has been a long time that we have lived like this, and they have not done anything about it.”

Regarding the road, which was unfinished when Daily Maverick spoke to her, she said the contractor appointed to complete the project had been struggling.

“Paving the road is beyond them. They started paving but ran into problems and decided to remove it. Now they are trying to reinstall the paving again. It’s like they [the contractors] don’t know what they are doing,” she said.

Will public anger translate into votes?

With local government elections approaching, the question is whether residents’ frustration will translate into greater participation at the ballot box or deepen their disillusionment with politics.

Lehihi told Daily Maverick that her living conditions had inspired her to vote for the first time in her life.

In the 2021 elections, the ANC led Lekwa-Teemane with 48.17% of the vote, followed by the EFF with 23.67% and the DA with 9.26%.

For her neighbour, who only identified himself as Lekgotla, dissatisfaction did not automatically translate into electoral participation. The community’s service delivery and infrastructure woes have pushed him in the opposite direction.

“Why should we vote? Even if I vote, I will still suffer the way I am suffering now,” Lekgotla said.

Asked if he would consider voting differently and give another party a chance at governing the municipality, he said, “Nothing will change. All the political parties are the same; they all make promises, but they don’t deliver. Even these new small parties, we don’t trust them. They are just in it to help themselves.” DM

Daily Maverick’s Election Tour is supported, in part, by funding from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.