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This morning the Democratic Alliance attempted once again to pretend that the problems facing the City of Tshwane began the day they left office, having handed over a well-managed city that the new government supposedly destroyed.

The reality is very different. The mess Tshwane is dealing with in 2025 is the product of years of DA mismanagement, denial and neglect. Every crisis they now point to is one they created, ignored or ran away from.

The most striking example of this is the R1.6 billion that Tshwane must now pay in backdated salary increases. The DA has spoken loudly this week about this burden, but not once have they acknowledged their own role in creating it. The facts are well known.

The DA refused to pay the wage increases agreed to for 2021 and 2022. They rejected every warning that the agreement had the force of law. They chose to ignore it and mount a legal challenge rather than renegotiate it or honour it. They dragged the City into a multi-year dispute that they ultimately lost when the Bargaining Council ruled against them. As a direct consequence of that loss, Tshwane must now pay R1.6 billion instead of the R489 million that would have been due in 2021.

This is not a burden created by the current administration. It is the result of the DA’s refusal to act responsibly when the issue first arose. Their decision to fight a losing battle turned a manageable obligation into a massive liability that now falls on Tshwane’s residents. That truth rests squarely at their feet.

This is only one example of the DA’s mismanagement. The truth is far worse.

When ActionSA entered government in October 2024, Tshwane had:

• Unfunded budgets for years
• A current ratio below 0.6 showing severe liquidity distress
• Eskom debt of more than R6.6 billion
• Qualified audits with over a dozen material findings
• Chronic underfunding of repairs and maintenance
• A dysfunctional billing system that could not support revenue recovery
• Collapsing infrastructure in water, electricity, roads and stormwater

This was the reality that the DA now prefers to forget.

Yet today they spoke as if none of this ever happened. They spoke of surpluses that did not exist and recovery plans that never materialised. They spoke as though they had averted disaster, when the record shows they spent years delaying decisions, ignoring legal obligations and presiding over steep financial deterioration.

Tshwane is working to undo that damage. Under Mayor Dr Nasiphi Moya the City is beginning to stabilise and recover, even while bearing the weight of liabilities created long before she took office.

In just one year, the new administration has delivered:

• The first fully funded budget since 2021
• A record R4.088 billion collected in a single month, the highest in Tshwane’s history
• A reduction of Eskom historical debt by more than R1.1 billion
• Full settlement of the R4.63 billion VAT liability
• Improved liquidity and better cashflow management
• Current Eskom and Rand Water accounts kept fully up to date
• Improved investor confidence with R86 billion in pledges at the recent Tshwane Investment Summit
• Major progress in stabilising financial leadership and systems

Despite this, the DA has claimed that paying the wage increases they refused for years will push Tshwane to the brink of losing the funded status of its budget. This claim is based on bogus numbers and conjecture. It has no grounding in the City’s financial position or in any of the work currently under way.

The City is in the process of engaging constructively with organised labour to determine the best approach to comply with the ruling while ensuring that Tshwane can continue to meet its financial obligations. This is a responsible and orderly process. It is guided by the facts, by the City’s cashflow modelling and by the legal requirement to honour the collective agreement.

For the DA to make wild predictions before this process is even complete is both premature and reckless. They have chosen to ignore the work that is being done and instead rely on the same scaremongering that has marked their approach to this issue from the beginning. Their financial warnings are nothing more than an attempt to manufacture panic in the hope that residents forget who caused this problem in the first place.

For the DA to spend its time issuing political warnings about problems it created would be ironic if it were not so irresponsible. ActionSA will not allow Tshwane’s residents to be misled about how we got here or who is working to fix it.

The truth is that ActionSA and its partners are stabilising the capital while the DA stands on the sidelines rewriting history. Tshwane deserves better than political theatre. It deserves honesty and leadership.

We remain confident that progress will continue under Mayor Moya despite the noise from those whose failures still hang over the City.

Issued by ActionSA National Chairperson Michael Beaumont