The Democratic Alliance (DA) in the KwaDukuza Local Municipality has rejected the municipality’s 2025/26 financial year draft budget.
The R3,3 billion draft budget that was tabled on 27 March 2025, does not address the needs of residents. It reflects the intent of the ANC-led municipality to make residents pay for their inefficiency and mismanagement.
The proposed tariff increase is an indication of how out of touch the council is with the reality of the people of KwaDukuza.
Instead of fixing electricity problems and making systems work better the municipality instead is raising electricity prices above inflation and ordinary people have to pay the price.
Poor planning on operational budgets, and a complete misalignment from Integrated Development Plan (IDP) submissions are also glaringly indicative in this draft budget. In a bizarre twist, there has been a R30 million reduction in security costs, this is from the same business unit that is hemorrhaging close to R750 000 per month on security guards for the homes of politicians, including the former Mayor. This is the same former mayor who has been allocated two (2) close protection officers while the current Mayor has been allocated five (5). We are curious about which community the former Mayor is currently leading, that warrants such an extensive security detail at the expense of the ratepayer.
The DA has proposed the following interventions on the draft budget:
-Public Private Partnerships that can source private sector capital for the upgrade of critical infrastructure- this will in turn unlock economic growth in the region but also reduce council having to internally fund capital projects
-Increasing the portion of the value of residential properties exempt from property rates from the current R150,000 to R300 000 – this is closer to the norm adopted by other municipalities.
– Curb electricity theft and energy loss as a mechanism to fund the current broken electricity model
The ANC in KwaDukuza must be reminded that the budget belongs to the people of KwaDukuza and not to a 39% political party.