Civic mutiny. That’s the only way forward for struggling communities and businesses if the government doesn’t comply with a court order to fix the chronically dysfunctional North West municipality of Ditsobotla, says Piet le Roux, the CEO of public interest business group Sakeliga.
After years of litigation, Sakeliga’s court victory last year finally exhausted every constitutional mechanism available to compel government action in Ditsobotla, which includes the struggling towns of Lichtenburg and Coligny, he says.
“At the highest level it’s the national executive’s responsibility now to facilitate the recovery of Ditsobotla. The ball is in the cabinet’s court to prove whether constitutional provisions for the recovery of mismanaged municipalities are sufficient or not.”
If they’re not, Sakeliga’s court order “will lay a very strong foundation for jurisprudential recognition of alternative remedies that are not specified in the constitution”.
Not to be too coy about it, what he means is civic mutiny — simply bypassing the failing state.
There is a downside: Le Roux concedes that “legal exposure is not ideal” for businesses.
“In times of crisis you can always defend what you’re doing. But you ideally want to use the courts to obtain recognition and sanction for businesses and communities to intervene in, say, the provision of water or road repairs or traffic lights or alternative bookkeeping of accounts and bills,” he says.
“Where things are heading in South Africa is either more mismanagement and collapse or parallel service delivery and administration. First on a small scale, and then bigger and bigger.”
He foresees organic, locally organised business-driven efforts with or without the court’s blessing — though with it would be first prize. And the constitution makes provision for this, he adds.
“We’ve come to the end of the road for litigation to compel the government to do its job. We have literally got the final order in that regard. The constitution has only one other avenue, which is not explicit, which is a catch-all provision that says that where everything else has failed in any sphere of society, the court may make alternative remedies. We’re now basically at the stage where this is going to be proven.”
The ball has been in the cabinet’s court since the 2025 ruling. That followed a decision by President Cyril Ramaphosa to put Ditsobotla under national administration in compliance with Sakeliga’s legal demands — and after it formally notified Ramaphosa and the ministers it holds responsible that it would seek personal cost orders against them for failing in their duty to intervene.
Following the threat to link them directly to the case, the government’s response was swift. Sakeliga received acknowledgement and a reply from the state attorney soon after sending the letters of notification.
The national intervention was passed by cabinet and publicly announced within a couple of weeks.
“There is no doubt that this was a very necessary step and the final one that actually got them across the line,” says Le Roux.
Now, local communities and businesses must be prepared to tackle governance issues themselves, he says. Given years of government inaction in the face of collapsing municipalities, it would be “imprudent” to assume that anything will change just because the president and cabinet, under threat of personal cost orders, have put Ditsobotla under administration.
After visiting the municipality several years ago, Ramaphosa described it as a “horror story”, said it was “captured by criminal elements” and promised that things would improve within weeks. The government did nothing and things got worse.
Then, two years ago, Sakeliga won a punitive costs order against the department of co-operative governance & traditional affairs and Ramaphosa after long and costly litigation to get them to intervene in a service delivery crisis in Ditsobotla that subsequently led to Clover closing the country’s largest cheese-making business in Lichtenburg.
Nothing came of that either.
Le Roux doesn’t see anything changing now, in spite of judicial oversight through mandatory quarterly reporting to the court and Sakeliga to monitor the cabinet’s compliance during the intervention.
“It’s up to the cabinet to show that they can actually do their job, but that’s unlikely,” says Le Roux.
‘Terra nova’
With or without government approval, businesses — whether in Lichtenburg, Joburg or any other collapsed municipality — will have to, as a matter of survival, provide alternative services that normally would come from the municipality.
“Whenever they decide to go the alternative route, we will defend them and craft litigation around that to provide them with legal protection. It’s not guaranteed, it’s terra nova, but that is where we see a way forward. The only way forward now.”
To some extent this has become normalised, and municipalities are not pushing back as much as they did.
“There is so much chaos in places like Joburg and Ditsobotla that where there are people willing to fix roads at their own expense, they’re more and more being left to do so.”
Survival for businesses means pushing ahead as far as they can and where they hit a wall of obstruction, finding ways around it with litigation to prevent municipalities from interfering.
“We’re ready to support them,” says Le Roux. “It’s becoming very clear that 18 months from now, cabinet will have failed to turn Ditsobotla around. We don’t have to wait for that. There’s no reason we can’t litigate right now if someone approaches us with a good project that is bankable and serious and is being obstructed.”
But civic mutiny has to develop organically, he says.
“If I just go on TV and tell people to do civic mutiny, it’s not going to work. Organically, it’s a very good option. If you want to do things that involve lots of capital outlay, lots of reputational exposure, then it’s good to have a legal strategy. In many municipalities the mentality is still: ‘Get a court order if you want us to allow you to fix something.’”
Though the Ditsobotla court order can be referenced in cases involving other municipalities, it is not constitutionally binding because it didn’t go to the Constitutional Court.
If the cabinet doesn’t provide quarterly progress reports as ordered by the court — and already it has fallen behind, he says — Sakeliga could take legal action. “But to what end?” Ultimately, there’s nothing it can do.
“You can’t litigate political will or political commitment if it’s not there. The government is what it is.”
Part of the purpose of Sakeliga’s court action was to expose the limits of public litigation “in an orderly way that increases the propensity for civic mutiny”, he says. “Even if the Ditsobotla court order doesn’t lead to government action and a turnaround, it helps pave the way legally to that next phase.”
The trade-off for local businesses is exit or fight. Too many are exiting, usually by quietly disinvesting or relocating.
Sakeliga wants to see more of them digging a trench. Given the current state of collapse of local government, this is almost a matter of social responsibility, he says.
“You face the potential of economic ruin if you stay. But we want businesses to dig a trench, fight for the community and make it work. It’s going to cost you, but there’s no easy way out of this state failure.”
‘Not for or against government’
Le Roux concedes that Sakeliga is perceived as being anti-transformation, but he makes no apologies for this.
“Transformation is a government policy. The word does not appear in the constitution. We see no reason to support government policies. Our goal is to restore economic order for the communities where we are involved.”
He holds the government’s policy of transformation largely responsible for the collapse of municipalities Sakeliga has litigated to fix.
“The government considers BEE and racial quotas for employment and public procurement to be part of transformation. If that is transformation, then we’re against it. We think BEE is harmful, we think public procurement rules based on race are harmful and race-based quotas are harmful, and we’re going to fight against all of that.
“We’re not for or against the government or any political party. We focus on the facts.”
He also makes no excuse for advocating civic mutiny.
“In South Africa, fixing a pothole is civic mutiny.”
