By Solly Msimanga MPL, DA Gauteng Leader of the Official Opposition
South Africa’s democratic gains are real, but in Gauteng, they are increasingly undermined by systemic failure. Expanded access to water, electricity, healthcare, and education has not translated into shared prosperity. Instead, the province remains defined by extreme inequality, weakening institutions, and declining public trust.
Too many of our people face rising unemployment, crime, a failing healthcare system, and an education system that fails to provide a conducive environment capable of equipping our youth with the skills necessary to thrive in this economy, and a plethora of other issues.
This is not incidental. It is the outcome of governance failure.
Our central business districts are characterised by old, dilapidated, and crumbling infrastructure right in the centres of the municipalities, where businesses should be thriving and the economy growing. The result is predictable: businesses disinvest, investment stalls, and job creation contracts because of lawlessness, unreliable services and hijacked buildings.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng has expessed concerns about townships in Emfuleni, particularly Evaton, where raw sewage spills pose a dangerous health risk to residents. Amid this collapse, the municipality has spent nearly R24 million on suspended employees, tying up public funds in unresolved disciplinary processes while service delivery deteriorates. A further R700 million has been squandered on excessive overtime, even as infrastructure continues to fail.
The people of Emfuleni deserve dignity and a government that delivers quality services. Yet the ANC-led municipality has spent nearly R700 million on excessive overtime while basic service delivery continues to collapse.
Informal settlements expose the depth of exclusion. In areas like Ivory Park’s Fearfokol informal settlement, the absence of basic services, sanitation, water, electricity, and waste removal is not an oversight. It is evidence of a governance model that tolerates structural neglect. When such conditions exist at scale across Gauteng, they cease to be exceptions; they become policy outcomes.
In recent years, Gauteng has come to resemble the epicentre of corruption in South Africa. Senior officials appear before the Madlanga Commission, while implicated Heads of Department are quietly recycled despite serious allegations, failed lifestyle audits, and unresolved findings.
What we need to emphasise is that corruption is not abstract nor victimless. It directly reallocates resources away from infrastructure, healthcare, and economic development. The recycling of implicated officials, weak consequence management, and unresolved investigations signal a system where accountability is optional. In this environment, failure is not punished; rather, it becomes normalised.
Our health system also leaves much to be desired. Gauteng residents are forced to contend with poor hospital conditions, long waiting times, staff shortages, overcrowding and often, medicine shortages. This, while officials entrusted with the public purse pillage and loot. Corruption is rampant in our healthcare system; the grand-scale looting of R2 billion from Tembisa Hospital is one of many examples.
In the same breath, thousands of cancer patients in Gauteng have suffered long biopsy delays, causing huge anxiety for patients whose survival chances depend on the outcome. Some patients have died while waiting for treatment, while in others the cancer has spread, making them ineligible for radiation treatment.
The SAPS Third Quarterly Crime Stats show that the province remains the epicentre for serious crimes such as murder, with 1536 people, which translates to approximately 17 murders per day. The province was the highest contributor of murder nationally, 24.2%. Furthermore, crimes such as attempted murder cases, sexual offences, rape, sexual assault and kidnapping increased quarter to quarter. This illustrates that the province is not making inroads in tackling serious crimes.
The current government needs to empower and resource our police stations. As the DA, we have consistently reiterated that the decentralisation of the South African Police Service (SAPS) would enable each province to manage its own police resources, including staff shortages, holding cells, and infrastructure challenges, without interference from the national government.
Devolving police resources would enable better equipping and support for under-resourced officers, strengthening their ability to keep communities safe. It would also ensure that resources are directed to stations most affected by serious crime, aligning allocation with provincial priorities.
Taken together, these shortcomings highlighted above point to a deeper problem: the erosion of state capacity. When institutions cannot maintain infrastructure, deliver basic services, enforce accountability, or ensure public safety, they cease to fulfil their core function.
Freedom, in this context, becomes conditional. It cannot be meaningfully exercised in environments defined by insecurity, deprivation, and institutional failure, nor honestly celebrated.
Until governance in Gauteng is reoriented around accountability, capability, and delivery, the gap between constitutional promise and lived reality will continue to widen.
