When the ANC once again secured a clear majority, winning around 61% of the vote in Buffalo City Metro during the 2021 local government elections, many residents were optimistic.
The expectation was that this renewed electoral mandate and political stability would translate into faster decision-making, stronger institutional coordination, and tangible improvements in essential services such as water, electricity, and road infrastructure, while also stimulating local economic development
Compared to coalition governments in municipalities such as the Nelson Mandela Bay, Tswane and Ekurhuleni which often struggle with delays and disagreements, majority rule at BCM seemed like a chance to get the city’s development back on track.
However, these hopes remain unmet. Governance is in crisis: infighting, deep divisions, unstable leadership, and questionable appointments undermine the municipality.
Stability has been replaced with delays, inefficiency, and an inability to meet urgent community needs.
Socioeconomic indicators show little improvement despite efforts to sustain essential services. Over 60% to 68% of the population lives in poverty, youth unemployment is high at between 35% and 45%
For residents, the consequences are now immediate, sustained, and escalating. Persistent water shortages, recurring electricity outages, and deteriorating road infrastructure continue to disrupt daily life.
These failures exert significant pressure on households, schools, clinics, and small businesses, steadily increasing the cost of living and exacerbating socioeconomic vulnerability. In many communities, service delivery backlogs have evolved into chronic infrastructure breakdown.
Socioeconomic indicators show little improvement despite efforts to sustain essential services. Over 60% to 68% of the population lives in poverty, youth unemployment is high at between 35% and 45%.
Rising expenses and stagnant household incomes indicate growing vulnerability. These figures confirm the worsening socioeconomic crisis.
This persistent gap between service delivery outputs and actual developmental impact is now widening at a dangerous pace. While certain administrative functions may continue to operate, they are not translating into meaningful improvements in livelihoods, dignity, or economic inclusion.
As a result, the municipality finds it more and more difficult to transition from routine upkeep to innovative development.
As a direct consequence, public confidence in local government has significantly eroded. The increasing frequency of service delivery protests is not incidental — it is a visible expression of accumulated frustration, unmet expectations, and declining trust.
Communities are no longer responding to isolated failures, but to a sustained pattern of systemic underperformance.
At this point, BCM stands at a critical inflection point. The experience since 2021 demonstrates, with increasing clarity, that a political majority alone is insufficient to guarantee effective governance or developmental progress.
Without urgent intervention, institutional recovery will continue to lag behind community needs, further entrenching inequality and instability.
What is now required is not incremental adjustment, but urgent and decisive action. This includes the immediate strengthening of political and administrative leadership, accelerated professionalisation of the municipal workforce, and strict enforcement of merit-based appointments to replace patterns of patronage and instability.
Equally urgent is the need to restore credible long-term infrastructure planning, improve transparency, and rebuild structured engagement with communities who are increasingly disengaged and disillusioned.
At the centre of these reforms must be a non-negotiable commitment to reliable, equitable, and sustainable service delivery. Without this, no meaningful socioeconomic recovery is possible.
Basic services are not optional deliverables — they are the foundation of economic activity, social stability, and human dignity.
Importantly, the current trajectory carries direct and unavoidable political consequences. The state of governance and service delivery will heavily influence public confidence and voter behaviour in the 2026 local government elections scheduled for November 2026.
Whether residents experience real, visible improvement — or continued decline — will likely determine whether trust is renewed or decisively withdrawn.
In the end, BCM’s post-2021 experience serves as a sobering reminder that governance flaws can quickly result in institutional deterioration, developmental standstill, and widespread public mistrust when they endure under political control.
The window of opportunity for remedial action is closing. Urgent leadership renewal, unwavering accountability, and a swift transition to citizen-centered governance are now necessary — before the effects become irrevocable.
Mbulelo Kalani is an employee of the Eastern Cape Provincial Treasury, member of South African Association of Public Administration. He writes in his personal capacity
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