Cyril Ramaphosa launches White Paper after admitting local government is broken

President Cyril Ramaphosa has outlined five major areas of reform in the revised White Paper on Local Government, saying South Africa must address the structural causes of municipal dysfunction rather than continue responding to service delivery failures.

Delivering the keynote address at the launch in Ekurhuleni on Thursday, Ramaphosa said the reforms would fundamentally change how municipalities were structured, financed, managed and held accountable, while strengthening cooperation across all three spheres of government.

The White Paper sets out to tackle dysfunction by reforming the entire system, not merely by responding to its symptoms.

The reforms come amid persistent problems with unreliable basic services, deteriorating infrastructure, financial mismanagement, corruption and weak administrative capacity across municipalities, nearly three decades after the adoption of the original White Paper in 1998.

Ramaphosa said the review had identified systemic weaknesses that could not be resolved by focusing on individual municipalities.