There probably isn’t a line in your household budget labelled “municipal dysfunction”. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t eating into your monthly budget — through the water you buy when the taps run dry, backup power during outages or another set of tyres ruined by potholes.
The ballot box has more to do with personal financial planning than many people realise.
Sharon Hamman, senior legal adviser at Momentum, argues that local government decisions can profoundly affect household finances, often in ways consumers overlook.
“My financial wellbeing and financial future don’t exist in isolation,” she says. “Although you are ultimately responsible for making your own financial decisions, you live in an environment that can influence those decisions.”
Think about the cost of safety. As Hamman puts it, a household might have to move to a safer, more expensive neighbourhood, or spend more on insurance, armed response and security cameras. Even the stress of feeling unsafe, she says, can affect people’s health, with financial consequences of its own.
But the highest costs often come from services that don’t work.
“Who pays when services aren’t delivered? We do,” Hamman says. The problem is that people don’t necessarily recognise these purchases as the cost of poor service delivery. The power goes out, so you buy lamps and portable chargers. It becomes just another expense to absorb.
Taxed twice
For households still paying municipal charges, that can mean paying twice: once for the service and again for a workaround for its failure. And every rand spent compensating for unreliable services is a rand unavailable for something else.
“All of these things affect how much you have left at the end of the month. That’s money you could have used for something else, whether building up an emergency fund or making extra contributions to your retirement fund,” Hamman says.
Stats SA’s 2025 General Household Survey found that 37.6% of households experienced prolonged water interruptions lasting more than two days at a time, up from 24.3% in 2012. Those able to afford backup systems can buy themselves some resilience; others have to live with the disruption.
Meanwhile, the auditor-general’s report on municipal finances for 2024/2025 notes that just 39 of the country’s 257 municipalities — about 15% — received clean audits.
This doesn’t affect only household finances. Hamman argues that reliable infrastructure and functioning communities help businesses operate and encourage investment, which supports employment and financial security.
“If you have an environment that functions properly and everyone does their part, that contributes to a country that works,” Hamman says.
Of course, no councillor sets the repo rate, and even a well-run municipality cannot shelter residents from every economic shock. National policy, electricity generation and policing fall outside the scope of local councils. And one election won’t magically fix years of infrastructure neglect.
But municipalities have considerable influence over local roads, water and sanitation, refuse removal, planning and other services that determine the cost and quality of daily life. So what happens when voters don’t trust the people asking for their support?
Turnout in the 2021 municipal election was just under 46%. According to an Ipsos survey released on October 30, 53% of eligible voters said no political party represented their views, suggesting an even weaker turnout rate on November 4.
For many, the problem may not be apathy but frustration with years of broken promises and poor service delivery. It’s difficult to believe your vote will make a difference when the same problems persist election after election. Yet, as Hamman argues, that disillusionment doesn’t make the financial consequences of municipal decisions disappear.
Conscious voting
Her advice is therefore to look beyond campaign promises and scrutinise candidates’ track records, their accountability and their ability to deliver. Start by looking at the evidence close to home. What have interruptions, poor roads and safety concerns cost your household over the past year?
The aim, she says, is to make a “conscious decision”.
And participation should not end once the votes have been counted. Residents also need to get involved in their communities, Hamman says, rather than just pointing fingers when something goes wrong. That does not remove the government’s obligation to deliver, but it recognises that accountability takes work between elections too.
There is no guaranteed financial return on a vote. But the choices made by those running your municipality help determine how far your income goes, what risks you must insure against and how much you have left for the future.
“There’s a ripple effect,” Hamman says. “One decision can have a major impact on your future.”
