Under a competent administration, five years provides ample time to draw tangible conclusions regarding the progress made by an elected body.
Yet, for the residents of Makhanda, the last half-decade has not been defined by progress, but by a profound betrayal of their constitutional rights.
What was intended to be a period of recovery has instead become a tragic case study in how administrative paralysis and provincial neglect can effectively mortgage a city’s health and infrastructure.
The human cost of this failure is not found in policy documents, but in the streets of the local municipality, where sewage continues to flow and the basic dignity of clean water remains a luxury rather than a right.
Very troubling assessments have been made about the Makana Local Municipality’s substandard ability to meet the most basic demands, most notably by its own residents.
This is through visible protests and petitions, constitutional and statutory bodies, the judiciary, religious and cultural groups, organised society, academics and media analysts.
Distinct assessments draw the attention of the local political administration.
The municipality, to the general public, has been perceived to be a shadow of its former self, due to its declining public infrastructure, water infrastructure, and political and financial instability.
To retrace five years of history, which helps lay the facts on the table, the municipality’s state of regression is documented.
In 2020, the Grahamstown High Court found that the municipality breached Section 152(1) of the constitution.
Specifically citing the administration’s failure to provide services sustainably and to promote a safe and healthy environment, labelling the administration’s response to the water crisis as unconstitutional.
“The Financial Recovery Plan (FRP) Makana LM Status Quo Assessment of 2021″ noted that while the municipality claimed strides, it was in serious or persistent material breach of its financial commitments.
It highlighted that the James Kleynhans Water Treatment Works upgrade (promised to finish in 2021) was plagued by delays, leaving the town vulnerable despite available funding.
The “AGSA Consolidated General Report on Local Government Audit Outcomes” between 2022 and 2024 cited that there was an example of administrative paralysis, which means the municipality had the money to fix pipes but lacked the technical and supply chain capacity to spend it.
Repairs and maintenance spending fell to a negligible 0.2% of the value of its assets.
The auditor-general’s report on the Makana Local Municipality did not evidence signs of progress in 2024 when it established that the municipality failed to even disclose water losses in its financial statements, effectively hiding the scale of the physical infrastructure failure.
The “Mid-year Performance Assessment Report of 2025/2026″ outlined that only 9% of the target for refurbishing the Belmont Valley Wastewater Treatment Works was met.
The report also admits under-achievement in the upgrade of the Alicedale sewer pump station and high-mast lighting due to delays in procurement processes.
Failed interventions by the municipality since 2019 prove the inability to improve conditions also suggesting that Section 139 interventions have struggled.
The inability should not solely be attributed to mishandling of finances but rather a technical and administrative vacuum where the Makana municipality cannot even fulfil the most basic paperwork required to spend the money it is given.
A cycle of interventions that show no improvements through administrators, financial recovery plans and performance indicators, in areas like water infrastructure and finances, was also an indictment of the provincial government.
Among these, its failure to show tangible improvements in the municipality despite significant interventions implies that its interventions were procedural rather than substantive.
It also points to a supervision gap where a municipality racks up four consecutive audit opinion disclaimers from 2022 to 2025 without due diligence and mismanaging the municipal infrastructure grant.
This as the provincial government failed to provide technical engineering and procurement expertise to manage this fund for water infrastructure refurbishments.
The worst indictment on the provincial government is prioritising political stability within the party structures over the administrative needs of the residents of Makhanda
The provincial government oversees the department of water and sanitation.
The persistence of sewage flowing into the streets and the failure of the James Kleynhans and Belmont Valley upgrades point to the direct failures of provincial-led infrastructure co-ordination.
The worst indictment on the provincial government is prioritising political stability within the party structures over the administrative needs of the residents of Makhanda.
Resisting the dissolution of the Makana council despite court orders and clear evidence of failure indicates that the province is more interested in protecting political incumbents than in upholding the rights of citizens to clean water.
The provincial government had the legal power, the constitutional mandate and the financial oversight responsibility to save Makhanda, but instead allowed it to become one of the poster children for state failure.
When attempting to answer the question, “Who is responsible for Makhanda’s contaminated future”, this should not be simplified to a single individual or government institution.
It’s a trinity of systemic failure involving national, provincial and local actors.
The local municipal political administration bears the primary responsibility for the day-to-day operational collapse.
The Eastern Cape provincial government is responsible for the failure to improve conditions through its toothless Section 139 interventions that can only be reduced to years of consistent political resistance, procurement paralysis and reactive governance.
The national department of water and sanitation, together with the National Treasury, shares responsibility for the future aspect of this contamination.
The Spirit of Makhanda ka Nxele, the Xhosa Warrior who led the 1819 attack on the British garrison at Grahamstown, whose fearless leadership is remembered 207 years later, has become the ideological engine for the recent years’ protest resistance against a failing administration.
This has been led by distinct voices in Makhanda — a struggle to be framed as a modern-day “Battle of Makhanda”.
That collective resistance against impossibility has been characterised by a rare unification of traditionally disparate groups like the Unemployed Peoples Movement, Concerned Makhanda Residents, Makana’s Citizens Front, Makhanda Business and Residents’ Association, Interfaith Solidarity, Archbishop Ngesi and the Vice Chancellery.
Residents of Makhanda, like any other town or city plagued by such impulses, should be uncomfortable with only debating policy.
They should actively resist a predatory political administrative class that is stifling progress and is standing in the way of the town or city’s future survival.
The systematic failure of the Section 139 interventions has transformed Makhanda into a tragic case study where administrative paralysis and provincial neglect have effectively mortgaged the city’s health and infrastructure.
In the end, the “contaminated future” is a self-inflicted legacy of state incapacity that can only be reclaimed through the defiant, unified spirit of a community now forced to fight for the basic dignity of clean water.
Ultimately, Makhanda proves that when the state fails in its constitutional mandate, the community ceases to be a mere collection of residents and becomes the only remaining sovereign power.
In the face of systemic neglect, the unified spirit of the community is the only force capable of reclaiming a future that the state has all but abandoned.
Lubabalo Cengani writes in his personal capacity
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