SA's best municipality

Alongside it is Emfuleni, one of the country’s worst-run municipalities.

- Ciaran Ryan

The latest Auditor-General (AG) report on local government audit outcomes details the dire state of South Africa's 257 municipalities, with just 34 receiving clean audits.

One of those was Midvaal, about an hour south of Johannesburg. It's a small municipality with a population of about 125,000 and 38,000 registered households.

Across the fence is the neighbouring municipality of Emfuleni, with a population of close to one million. It is, by most measures, one of the worst-run in the country, with litter tossed onto any available piece of land and sewage seeping onto the streets.

It's frequently in the news, usually for all the wrong reasons, not least because it owes Eskom close to R6 billion; Midvaal owes Eskom nothing.

Earlier this year, Ratings Afrika declared Midvaal and Mossel Bay the country's best-run municipalities, based on a scoring system that rewards operating performance, debt and liquidity management, affordability of living, budget practices and infrastructure development.

Midvaal was the only municipality in Gauteng to win a clean audit from the AG.

"We commend Midvaal Local Municipality for sustaining its clean audit for 10 consecutive years," says the AG's latest report on local government audit outcomes.

Emfuleni, on the other hand, "is in a concerning financial position". It begs the question: what does Midvaal do that Emfuleni doesn't?

It turns out just about everything. Midvaal is run by the Democratic Alliance (as are all the top 10 municipalities in SA), while Emfuleni is ANC-run.

“In the bin,” comes the reply. There’s little to no tolerance for either litter or land invasions. Nor for illegal electrical or water connections.