the November 4 election<\/a> with a target of 60 of the country’s 257 municipalities, more than double the 27 it governs, according to national campaign manager Ashor Sarupen.<\/p>\nHill-Lewis put three guarantees to voters at the heart of his speech, starting with a pledge to ensure municipal jobs go to qualified people.<\/p>\n
“Under the DA, municipal jobs will go to people who can actually do the work,” Hill-Lewis, who is also Cape Town mayor, said.<\/p>\n
“They will not go to the politically connected and engineers\u00a0must manage infrastructure.<\/p>\n
“Honest professionals must run administrations.<\/p>\n
“When people steal or waste your money or fail through negligence, there must be consequences.<\/p>\n
“Under the DA, public money is never party money.<\/p>\n
“DA governments have a zero tolerance for corruption.”<\/p>\n
The second guarantee was a rule that money collected for water and electricity may be spent on nothing else.<\/p>\n
“Today I am announcing a rule that will apply wherever the DA governs,” Hill-Lewis said.<\/p>\n
“Every rand collected for water will be protected for water.<\/p>\n
“Every rand collected for electricity will be protected for electricity.<\/p>\n
“Your money will no longer be treated as a political slush fund.<\/p>\n
“It must be used to repair pipes, maintain substations and replace cables.<\/p>\n
“It must never disappear into big salaries, political projects or corrupt contracts.”<\/p>\n
The third covered local economies and safety, with the party promising to fight for capable municipalities to receive investigative powers.<\/p>\n
“When criminals are arrested, proper evidence must reach prosecutors so that arrests can lead to convictions,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This means that capable municipal police forces must have the power to investigate crime.<\/p>\n
“And when you walk home at night, you must know that your government is on your side, not on the side of the criminals.”<\/p>\n
The manifesto goes further than Hill-Lewis did in his speech, committing DA-run municipalities to hotlines where residents can report new shacks before they become permanent structures.<\/p>\n
That distinction decides whether a municipality can act at all.<\/p>\n
Once a shack becomes someone’s home, the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act of 1998, which gives effect to section 26 of the Constitution, bars a municipality from removing the occupier without a court order.<\/p>\n
Municipal police will be capacitated to respond promptly against anyone who intends to proceed with a land grab, according to the document.<\/p>\n
The party is also backing its private member\u2019s Bill to amend the Act, which was considered by Parliament\u2019s human settlements portfolio committee last year.<\/p>\n
The Bill would make it a crime to incite land invasions, tighten the factors courts must consider before ordering alternative accommodation and require them to set a time limit for how long municipalities must provide it.<\/p>\n
The document further commits the party to keep fighting to replace black economic empowerment at national level with a non-racial model that targets poverty instead of race, rewarding companies for creating local jobs and supporting small businesses in township and rural economies.<\/p>\n
Hill-Lewis raised neither the land invasion plan nor black economic empowerment in his speech.<\/p>\n
On paying for services, the manifesto commits DA councils to cutting off residents who refuse to pay or who connect illegally, and to approving cost-reflective tariffs.<\/p>\n
It states that honest residents end up subsidising those who take without contributing when municipalities fail to act.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the party has promised to run registration campaigns to find poor households that qualify for free water, electricity and refuse removal but are not on the system.<\/p>\n
The document also commits DA municipalities to bringing in private operators to deliver water, electricity and waste removal where a council cannot cope, using section 78 of the Municipal Systems Act.<\/p>\n
Municipal accounting officers will be made to personally repay losses caused by their actions or, in some cases, their failure to act.<\/p>\n
DA councils will have to publish the price of every contract they award, including any premium paid above the lowest qualifying bid.<\/p>\n
The manifesto sets out the state of local government the party is campaigning against.<\/p>\n
Only 39 of the country’s 257 municipalities received a clean audit in 2024\/25, while eight received disclaimed audits, meaning they failed to account properly for public money.<\/p>\n
Municipalities ran up more than R17bn in wasteful and fruitless expenditure between 2021\/22 and 2023\/24.<\/p>\n
Households and businesses owed municipalities R427.7bn by 2025, 88% of it practically uncollectible.<\/p>\n
National Treasury funds more than 10 million indigent households to receive free water and electricity, but fewer than a quarter of them receive those services.<\/p>\n
The housing backlog stands at 2.6 million households.<\/p>\n
Hill-Lewis called Johannesburg the most broken city in the country while standing in it, describing a visit this week to a new sports field in Savannah City, in DA-run Midvaal, from where he could see three municipalities at once.<\/p>\n
“In front of me in the distance was Johannesburg, the most broken city in South Africa,” he said.<\/p>\n
“To the left of me down there was Emfuleni, one of the worst governed municipalities in South Africa.<\/p>\n
“And beneath my feet where I was standing was Midvaal, one of the best.<\/p>\n
“You see from that one soccer pitch, I could see the consequences of bad government.<\/p>\n
“And I could see the possibilities of good government right next to each other.<\/p>\n
“We are not guessing about how to fix South Africa. We have done it. We are doing it.<\/p>\n
“And we will do it where you live.”<\/p>\n
He told the crowd the DA had recently taken Ward 28 in Emfuleni by eight votes.<\/p>\n
“That is how close the choice can be,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Between another five years of failure and going downwards and backwards, and a councillor who gets up every day with love in their heart and service in their heart.<\/p>\n
“So don’t let anyone tell you that your vote doesn’t matter.<\/p>\n
“In Johannesburg your vote matters. In Tshwane every vote is going to matter. In Ekurhuleni every vote is going to matter.”<\/p>\n
The DA fights this election off its worst local government result in two decades.<\/p>\n
It took 21.6% of the national vote in 2021, down from 26.9% in 2016 and its weakest local showing since 2006.<\/p>\n
It held Cape Town outright with about 57%, increased its majority in Midvaal, its only outright win in Gauteng, and took uMngeni, its first municipality in KwaZulu-Natal.<\/p>\n
That election produced about 66 hung councils on a record low turnout of 45.8%, and left the ANC on 45.59%, its first sub-50% result in a nationwide vote.<\/p>\n
uMngeni mayor Chris Pappas, who is seeking a second term, featured in a campaign video played to the crowd, ahead of a likely battle for the hearts and minds of KZN voters.<\/p>\n
Johannesburg mayoral candidate Helen Zille, Ekurhuleni mayoral candidate Khathutshelo Rasilingwane, Tshwane mayoral candidate Cilliers Brink and federal chairperson Solly Msimanga spoke before Hill-Lewis.<\/p>\n
Zille told the crowd Johannesburg would get no caretaker administration from the DA.<\/p>\n
“This is not going to be another caretaker government,” she said.<\/p>\n
“In fact, it is going to be no ordinary government at all.<\/p>\n
“It will be a fighting government.<\/p>\n
“If you are part of a criminal syndicate in the city of Johannesburg, let me give you some advice.<\/p>\n
“Run.”<\/p>\n
She said local government was where politics stopped being theory and became reality for ordinary people.<\/p>\n
“Local government is where politics comes out of your tap, or it doesn’t, where the ANC governs,” Zille said.<\/p>\n
“It’s where you can’t hide behind slogans or hide behind struggle credentials.<\/p>\n
“You cannot fake competence.”<\/p>\n
Hill-Lewis closed with an appeal against splitting the opposition vote.<\/p>\n
“This is how we are going to get South Africa working for all, my friends,” he said.<\/p>\n
“So in this election, don’t waste your votes on parties who have destroyed every municipality they have ever touched.”<\/p>\n
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