If one line summed up the state of eThekwini at IOL’s local government elections debate this week, it was this: “Issuing a tender is not the whole problem. Following up and ensuring the work gets done is the crucial one.”
For two hours, eight parties that want to run South Africa’s third-largest metro (the ANC, DA, IFP, EFF, MK Party, ActionSA, ERPM and Minority Front (MF) agreed on very little. Except on this: Durban’s tender system is not broken on paper. It is broken on implementation.
The follow-up failure
The debate, held in Durban ahead of the 4 November local government elections, moved quickly from manifestos to lived reality: contractors who win multimillion-rand jobs, do half the work and disappear, and then watch the council amend the budget to pay someone else to finish it.
“Most of the people that receive tenders, we know where to be found. A huge percentage of the work is not done. It comes back to council, we amend budgets, and we get somebody else to do it. That’s what we’ve been doing at council,” said one candidate.
That admission, from inside the current council, is significant. It reframes eThekwini’s R15 billion debtors book and its collapsed infrastructure not as a revenue problem, but as a contract management problem.
Both the DA and ActionSA described the loophole in detail. A contractor fails and is referred to a blacklisting committee. It then changes its company name and the gender of the director on the Central Supplier Database, and wins another tender under the new name.
“Those things must stop. You will see them here, there, everywhere. They owe the city hundreds and hundreds of millions. Who is accounting?” asked Alicia Kissoon the DA candidate.
Another speaker pointed to the rise of “super-contractors”, entities that have effectively privatised the city’s plumbing capacity.
Hlengiwe Mkhaliphi, the mayoral candidate of the EFF said: “We have super plumbers who have won a tender with no plumbing experience whatsoever, who now control all the plumbers that were previously working for our city. That is why we are having all these issues with leaks”.
Two competing solutions emerged:
Automate it. The IFP and DA pushed for an end-to-end electronic tender system with no human interference. They pointed to a pilot already running in the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Treasury’s finance department, where suppliers apply, are scored and are appointed without officials touching the file.Insource it. ActionSA and the EFF argued the opposite: scrap reliance on tenders for basic services entirely. They proposed employing municipal plumbers, artisans and cleaning teams directly to respond within 48 hours, “without waiting for a contractor to be contracted to go on site”.
The MK Party went further: “We are going to scrap that tender system and engage the services of qualified engineers, employ artisans, and have a decentralised system.”
Consequence management: reports without consequences
The second fault line was accountability. Zakhele Mncwango, the mayoral candidate of ActionSA and the DA’s Kissoon both said they had reported corruption, including a case in which a member of the mayoral committee (MMC) allegedly instructed the Durban International Convention Centre (ICC) to use public funds for an ANC party event, with the venue rental paid for by the ANC Women’s League.
“I personally have reported many matters. They have been investigated. The problem is the recommendations haven’t been implemented. The same officials that were reported are still working for the city,” said one opposition councillor.
The ANC’s response was revealing. Thabani Nyawose, the party’s Convenor of the ANC eThekwini Regional Task Team (RTT) said it had dismissed more than 300 employees for corruption in the past five years, including senior officials, but that disciplinary matters are dealt with in camera under the rules of order.
“When we deal with those matters, we don’t publicise them,” he said.
That answer drew an immediate challenge from the floor and from other parties: if consequence management is secret, how can voters trust it? Shouldn’t those found guilty be named and shamed?
This is where the debate turned from policy to law. The Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) and the Municipal Systems Act (MSA) require transparent consequence management, but council rules allow personnel matters to be discussed behind closed doors. That tension between legal transparency and political protection is at the heart of eThekwini’s audit outcomes, where the Auditor-General has flagged billions in fruitless and wasteful expenditure with no one held personally liable.
The most concrete admission came when the ANC was asked about its own oversight report. It found that 16 contractors had failed to meet their key performance indicators by the second quarter of 2025/26, across refuse collection, infrastructure, road rehabilitation and housing construction. The report recommended termination and blacklisting.
The ANC conceded that the report exists, said it proves transparency, and said blacklisting “is not a short process. People have to follow the law, so that we cannot be challenged after those decisions are implemented.”
According to municipal records, that process has been “ongoing” for over a year.
The CBD question no one could answer properly
The final substantive question, put to the IFP, was about the Durban CBD, where confidence has collapsed, buildings are hijacked and businesses have left for Umhlanga and Ballito.
The IFP, which currently leads the provincial government of national unity, leaned on its provincial record: “Our leaders’ offices have zero debt to eThekwini. We are not afraid to fire a mayor.” But it struggled to outline a CBD-specific plan beyond “clean up the streets” and fixing the CCTV cameras, more than half of which do not work.
The ANC pointed to the Point Waterfront development, a programme to remove homeless people from the CBD for rehabilitation and skills training, and a Southern Sun Group expansion worth R200 million.
The DA and ERPM were blunt: “You cannot have people investing in the city when the water is off. We have had a mass exodus of businesses because of that exact infrastructure issue.”
The analysis that emerged is that Durban’s CBD decay is a symptom, not a cause. Tourism cannot recover while beaches are closed because of sewage pump failures at the stations. Investment cannot return while non-revenue water sits at 54%, up from 41% in 2021, and while the city spends an estimated R850 million a month on water tankers, compared with R10 million in 2021.
The qualification circus
In a telling moment, the MK Party proposed a minimum qualification of a master’s degree for mayor, claiming its own candidate holds a Master’s in Public Administration.
Other candidates on stage immediately disputed that claim, saying the same candidate had previously stated publicly that his highest qualification was in biblical studies. The MK candidate did not provide clarity.
It highlighted a broader issue in this election. With 212 seats in council, parties are promising mayors with rocket-science solutions but may secure only one or two seats, not enough to pass a single motion without a coalition.
As one smaller party, the Minority Front, warned: “If you want to make anything happen, you have to have the numbers. Majority rules. Stop misleading people.”
What voters should demand next
The debate, moderated by IOL, ended with an audience question that cut through all the manifestos: “If you fail to meet your 100-day promises, will you step down?”
Most candidates said yes. But the more important commitment for Durban voters to extract is not a resignation promise. It is a measurable one.
Before 4 November, every party contesting eThekwini should be asked to publish:
• The full list of the 16 failed contractors and proof of blacklisting.
• Three sewage pump stations they will fix in 100 days, with cost and deadline.
• A commitment to publish monthly capital budget spending. eThekwini spent less than 60% last year while infrastructure collapsed.
As one candidate said in closing: “We have sufficient legislation to govern all of these processes. The legislation needs to be used.”
For eThekwini, the law is not the missing piece. The follow-up is.
* Ayanda Mdluli is the Editor: Thought and Opinion at IOL
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of IOL