The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta)’s Consolidated Annual Local Government Performance Report for the 2023/2024 financial year was gazetted on 29 October 2025.

While the department itself showed improvements with its first ever unqualified audit opinion, the situation at a local government level much is much more lacklustre.

The report found that most municipalities have shown to be in financial dire straits, some on the brink of bankruptcy. The majority are simply not meeting their mandates to provide basic services. There is weakening infrastructure across municipalities, and most damning perhaps is that there are no clear plans or indications of competent capabilities or available resources to lean on to make the  necessary U-turns.

Among the key findings in the report are that only 16 percent of municipalities (of the 257 in the country) received clean audits. This means most municipalities had adverse audit findings, disclaimers and other qualifiers. The report also found that that were some municipalities that simply failed to submit financial statements at all.

The Auditor General’s report 2023/2024 found the worse performing municipalities are found in the provinces of the Free State and the North West.

The report points to municipalities facing mounting debt owed to Eskom, and water boards; having poor revenue collection; and cash-flow problems. It means general dysfunction and neglect and an inability to maintain critical infrastructure including road repairs and maintenance, or being able to provide safe, uninterrupted water supplies.

Civil society groups, including OUTA (Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse), has highlighted that the creeping dysfunction affecting local government across the board points to worsening governance and absence of quality leadership, accountability, transparency or consequence management.