Emfuleni in Decline: How Service Delivery Collapse Betrayed a Community
- Gerhard Janse van Rensburg
- Oct 20
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 21
Billions in debt, sewage spilling into the Vaal, and protests on the streets - How Gauteng’s steel heartland became a symbol of municipal failure
By Gerhard Janse van Rensburg
Emfuleni Local Municipality has collapsed under the weight of corruption, debt, and neglect. Once Gauteng’s steel belt powerhouse, it now struggles with sewage spills, broken infrastructure, and mass protests. This is the story of how South Africa’s industrial heartland became a symbol of municipal failure.
Introduction: A Municipality in Distress.
On a hot summer afternoon in Sebokeng, children kick a plastic bottle across a street streaked with sewage. The stench clings to the air, so thick that even the breeze off the Vaal River cannot wash it away. For many families here, this is normal: potholes, broken traffic lights, overflowing rubbish, and electricity cuts that drag on for days.
This is Emfuleni Local Municipality, once the industrial powerhouse of Gauteng, now a cautionary tale of how mismanagement, corruption, and political neglect can destroy the most basic services.
From Industrial Pride to Financial Ruin
Emfuleni, which includes Vereeniging, Vanderbijlpark, Sebokeng, Sharpeville, Vaal Oewer, and surrounding areas, was once the beating heart of South Africa’s steel industry. ArcelorMittal (previously ISCOR), Sasol, and a network of factories drew thousands of workers, building communities that thrived on steady jobs and growing opportunities.
But as global steel demand shifted and local governance faltered, Emfuleni’s fortunes declined. The municipality now faces crippling debts, owing more than R12 billion to Eskom (R9 billion) and Rand Water (R3 billion). Auditor-General reports consistently flag irregular expenditure, poor controls, and failed financial management. In 2018, Emfuleni was placed under partial provincial administration. In 2021, the national Department of Water and Sanitation had to intervene directly in its crumbling wastewater system. Yet despite these interventions, the decline continues.
Water & Sanitation: The Vaal in Peril
Perhaps no issue has brought Emfuleni’s failures into sharper focus than water and sanitation.
The Vaal River, one of South Africa’s most important water resources, has been repeatedly polluted by untreated sewage spilling from broken wastewater treatment plants. Pump stations lie idle, vandalised or unmaintained. In Sebokeng, residents report sewage flowing down streets for weeks without repair.
“We live with the stench of sewage every day,” says Maria M., a Sharpeville resident. “Our children get sick, and nobody comes to fix it. It feels like we don’t matter.”
The Department of Water and Sanitation allocated billions to repair the system, bringing in the SANDF in 2019 to stabilise operations. Then came the SANDF in late 2019, and after them came ERWAT, which pulled out after their Financial Officer was shot non-fatally in the arm. Then, the Department of Water and Sanitation invoked section 63 of the Water Act in late 2021 and appointed Rand Water as the local implementation agent, taking over the rehabilitation of water and sanitation infrastructure from Emfuleni, but corruption scandals, stalled contracts, and bureaucratic infighting have meant that progress remains painstakingly slow.
Electricity: More Than Load-Shedding
National load-shedding is only part of Emfuleni’s electricity crisis. The municipality has repeatedly defaulted on its Eskom payments, prompting threats of supply cuts. Residents in parts of Sebokeng and Evaton endure extended outages due to transformer failures and illegal connections.
For businesses, this is devastating. In Vanderbijlpark, a small engineering workshop owner explains:
“We can’t plan production anymore. No power, no water; I’ve had to lay off staff. Investors won’t touch this area."
Emfuleni’s industrial backbone is crumbling, taking jobs with it.
Roads & Waste: The Everyday Struggles
The signs of decay are everywhere.
Driving through Vereeniging feels like navigating a warzone of potholes. Residents joke bitterly about “pothole tourism,” where visitors are warned to avoid certain roads altogether. Traffic lights fail regularly, making intersections dangerous.
Refuse collection is erratic, with municipal workers sometimes absent for weeks. Illegal dumping sites mushroom across neighbourhoods, attracting vermin and creating health hazards. Community clean-ups try to restore some dignity, but the scale of the problem is overwhelming.
The Human Cost of Failure
These failures are not abstract policy debates; they define daily survival.
Health clinics report rising cases of diarrhoea and waterborne illness linked to sewage contamination. Schoolchildren study by candlelight. Taxi drivers pay out of pocket to repair suspension damage caused by cratered roads. Families in townships and suburbs queue at water tankers that arrive sporadically, if at all.
Unemployment in Emfuleni hovers above the Gauteng average, worsened by factory closures. Young people, once drawn by the promise of jobs in heavy industry, now face bleak futures.
“We’ve been let down by everyone,” says a youth organiser in Sebokeng. “We protest because no one listens unless we burn tyres.”
Leadership Without Direction
Part of Emfuleni’s crisis lies in its political instability. In just over a decade, the municipality has seen multiple mayors, MMCs, and administrators come and go. Each promising reform, but none delivered.
Council meetings frequently collapse in chaos, with factions fighting over tenders and appointments. The ruling ANC faces internal divisions, while opposition parties accuse it of looting and incompetence. Coalition talks often fizzle out.
The Auditor-General’s reports read like a broken record: irregular expenditure in the hundreds of millions, contracts awarded without process, and money spent with little accountability. The clean-up of the Vaal River, once heralded as a turning point, has become another symbol of wasted opportunity.
Communities Fight Back
With government absent, communities and civic groups are stepping in.
Business forums in Vanderbijlpark have patched potholes themselves, using private contractors.
Environmental justice groups have taken Emfuleni to court over sewage spills, forcing reluctant compliance.
Community protests in Sebokeng, Sharpeville, and Evaton have become routine, often escalating into clashes with police.
But residents know these efforts are stopgap measures. Without structural reform, their efforts cannot replace a functioning municipality.
Attempts at Intervention: A History of Failure
The provincial government invoked Section 139 of the Constitution in 2018, placing Emfuleni under administration. National government has since intervened in its wastewater crisis. Billions of rand have been allocated.
Yet progress has been painfully slow. In 2019, the SANDF was called in to help stabilise water treatment plants, but once they left, the system slipped back into disrepair. By 2023, reports showed little improvement despite large budgets spent.
Analysts say the problem is not only technical but political: entrenched patronage networks and weak oversight ensure that interventions are undermined from within.
A Warning for South Africa
Emfuleni’s collapse is more than a local tragedy. It is a warning to municipalities across South Africa: without accountability, transparency, and a focus on service delivery, communities unravel. The decline of this once-proud industrial hub is mirrored in other municipalities teetering on the edge of collapse.
If Emfuleni, with its industrial tax base and strategic location, can fall this far, what does it mean for towns with fewer resources?
The ANC’s Waning Grip: South Africa at a Crossroads
For three decades, the African National Congress (ANC) has stood at the centre of South Africa’s political landscape, carrying the mantle of liberation and the promise of a better future. Yet in 2025, that promise feels distant. Corruption scandals, collapsing municipalities, and an economy strangled by mismanagement have eroded both the credibility of the party and the patience of the people.
The ANC, once the moral compass of a nation, has become entangled in its own machinery of patronage and power. Instead of ushering in a new era of dignity and prosperity, it presides over decaying infrastructure, a worsening unemployment crisis, and communities forced to fend for themselves when the state fails. The very movement that claimed to embody the people’s will has become the very barrier to progress.
A Crisis of Governance
Municipalities across the country, Emfuleni, Enoch Mgijima, and countless others are synonymous with dysfunction. Service delivery failures are not isolated; they are systemic. Auditor-General reports routinely uncover irregular spending, fruitless expenditures, and a culture of impunity where accountability is rare. The tragedy is not just the theft of money, but the theft of opportunity: every rand wasted is a clinic not built, a water pipe not repaired, a streetlight not fixed.
The ANC has perfected a politics of survival appeasing factions, recycling compromised leaders, and exploiting state resources to cling to power. South Africans are left to navigate rolling blackouts, dry taps, and unsafe streets. The liberation movement has, in effect, become the jailer of the very freedoms it once championed.
A Turning Point
South Africa is at a crossroads. To continue under ANC dominance is to accept decline as inevitable. To chart a new course is to reclaim the unfinished work of liberation: not merely the casting off of apartheid, but the building of a society where integrity, competence, and justice prevail.
The time for nostalgia has passed. The time for excuses has expired. South Africa’s future depends on the courage of its citizens to demand better and to vote accordingly.
The Way Forward
If South Africa is to break free from this cycle, it must embrace a new social contract grounded in accountability, community power, and responsible leadership.
Restoring Emfuleni will not be easy, but it is possible. Experts point to these urgent steps:
Break the culture of impunity – Political leaders must face real consequences when they betray the public trust.
Prioritise service delivery over politics – Municipalities exist to provide water, power, sanitation, and security, not to enrich elites.
Empower communities – Citizens must organise at ward and municipal level to hold councillors accountable.
Take back responsibility at the ballot box – South Africans cannot wait for change from within the ANC. To safeguard democracy and dignity, voters must remove the ANC from power and demand a government that serves the people, not itself.
Build new leadership pipelines – Credible alternatives must be nurtured at local and provincial levels to ensure sustainable change.
Until these changes are made, Emfuleni will continue its slow collapse and its people will continue to pay the price.
Conclusion: Dignity in the Balance
In the words of one resident:
“We don’t ask for luxury. We just want water, electricity, clean streets. Is that too much?”
For Emfuleni’s people, service delivery is not a slogan; it is the difference between dignity and despair. And unless the municipality can be turned around, the name Emfuleni, “place of abundance”, will remain a cruel irony.
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