Ratepayers in 280 municipalities around South Africa are paying their monthly bills to the local authority and yet that municipality cannot actually tell be people where or how their money has been spent.

They can't account for it.

Homeowners, property developers and landlords are paying billions of rands to 280 councils every month and not one of these organisations can properly account for the money they have received or spent.

At least that's what the Auditor-General's report found last week when it revealed that just three – of the 283 local authorities – had received a clean, unqualified audit. All the rest of them had not complied with, nor met, the basic accounting standards laid down by law. And, worse still, they were unable to provide the necessary detail required by the Auditor-General.

Rightly or wrongly, money is the lifeblood of the economy and, as ratepayers, we all work hard to earn what cash we can and we strive to spend as little of it as possible or to spend it on the essential services that are needed to keep a property comfortable, habitable and clean.

Services such as refuse removal, electricity supplies, water and sanitation.

And we pay for these services at ever-escalating levels every month. It is us, the ratepayers who are the lifeblood of the municipal economy. We are part of the River of Cash and our money flows into the councils and out of it in a never-ending stream of expenditure.

Among us there are the occasional defaulters who run up accounts and then run for the hills leaving the bills unpaid. But they are the exception rather than the rule.

There are others who are slow payers, shell out the minimum amount possible to keep services functioning. There are even those who make a financial arrangement with the council and pay off their accrued arrears, interest-free over a predetermined period.

Like any other large business in the country, the municipalities rely on payments from their residents and ratepayers to generate the money required to provide the services. It's a simple transaction. You give us money and we give you services.

Until things start going wrong.

Until they start sending out accounts with gross miscalculations or with simple arithmetic errors caused by a goon who changed a crucial piece of software code in the billing system.

Sometimes they just forget to send out their accounts at all.

Slowly but surely, these fundamental errors mount up.

Willing ratepayers suddenly find that their normal rates and electricity bill of say R2,500 has escalated to R8k. Endless phone calls go unanswered. If you take the trouble to go into the council – where streams of equally disgruntled citizens stand around and complain for hours on end – you will eventually be met by a stony-faced, unfriendly and hostile person that demands immediate payment.

It's like a jail sentence without a trial. Pay up or else. . .

You have no guarantee that the money charged to you is correctly calculated or that it is a true reflection of what you owe or what you (and your household) has consumed.

And this inefficiency, like cancer, just keeps eats through our local government structures.

Here's a simple example: I live on a sub-divided property with three sections, namely A, B and C. I made the mistake of questioning my own electricity bill some time ago as it seemed inordinately high. I then discovered that not once in the past two years had the meter been read.

In fact the meter number on my account did not exist.

So, in a flash of brilliance, the Tshwane council's representative told me that he would order a new meter, monitor that for three months and then calculate (based on the electricity and water consumption) what amount should have been paid over the period.

He would then deduct the payments made and we would end up with a final account. It sounded simple enough.

A month later, I received a bill for just over R13k.

The next month it had risen to R19k and then, in the third month it was sitting at about R23k.

So I went to look at the meter box.

What the geniuses had done was to take out the three separate meters for the three properties, combine them all into one and bill me for all electricity and water consumed on three different properties.

You can imagine the mess we must now try to unravel.

This is irritating inefficiency in a council that still almost functions. My irritations pale into insignificance when they are compared with many others that I have come across.

Forget the rates bills or the incorrect electricity charges. Consider the more damning evidence that residents in Louis Trichardt, Emfuleni or Delmas have to deal with. For them the water systems are polluted and disease-ridden.

They have to live and survive on a diet of bacteria-infested water. The water is so foul that it starts killing their children, their elderly or their infirm. And the councils in many regions of Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal or the Eastern Cape go unpunished.

What on earth do we do to rectify this municipal mess?

A rates boycott aimed at forcing municipalities to comply with basic good governance? Johannesburg tried it some years back and ended up losing its case when, eventually, it came before the courts.

Municipal lobbying of ward councillors?

Well the ballot box has, so far anyway, failed to achieve a change of government anywhere in Africa and I can't see that pattern changing in the next few generations. Government's existing track record of failing to deliver services over 15 years has not altered or changed the way people vote in a general election.

Just look at this year's election results.

The only possible course of action might be to appeal to the courts. But even that seems to have little or no effect as the string of cases against the Emfuleni Council proves. The court orders are simply ignored.

So it is with a great sense of impotence that I sit and ponder the future of our councils. It seems that there is nothing we can do to protect our money. Nothing we can do to compel the local authorities to deliver services and nothing we can do to stop our councils from wasting our money.

And that, on a lovely spring morning in Africa, is deeply disheartening.

*Paddy Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com. The content of his columns constitutes his personal opinion and doesn't pretend to be facts or advice. Contact him at paddy@neomail.co.za.

Readers' Comments
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Your story conjures up memories of the 5 year battle I had with the Roodepoort Municipality from 2004 to early this year. It involved a endless list of phone calls and discussions with people who were powerless/uselsss to do anything about my problem. The basic comprehension skills needed to understand the flow of water through a meter are lacking along with the ability to effectively manage staff or make decisions. Consider the recent housing boom and increase in rates which must have resulted from the increase in the number of billable units, not to mention the percentage increase on the units that already existed before the boom. Where is that additional income going, because the answer is not service delivery? As you mentioned the Auditor General doesn't know themselves. The solution to budget deficits appears to be aimed at the income line only with little to no attention being given to managing the cost lines.

The basic concept that the municipality exists for the sole purpose of providing services to the community it represents is lacking. The municipality would prefer to keep the community at a distance where they do not need to deal with the problems caused through their inability to do their job. The disconnection of services is a stick that is waived at us to extort payment for incorrect billings resulting in no motivation to rectify the problem that they are ill equipped to handle. Boycott the payment services? Put me on that list. It is a numbers game, if there are enough people willing to stick their hand up and be counted then it will work. I am not advocating not paying but rather putting the money in trust until the tide turns and the results can be shown. Fraud and incompetence is the root of the problem and without pressure in some shape or form we will be having this same discussion next year and the year after that. - Mike

Yes, that is a really good question, what are we paying for?

I stay in Alberton, but work abroad. My account came to R4500 last month. The only person's home while I'm gone is the wife and son and both work. Whe the wife went and asked the council what is wrong they couldn't answer us on where the problem is.

There is another thing that I can't understand; the amount of water you use and the amount of waste water are the same. When you question them on that and explain that you water the garden top-up the pool etc. then they can't understand that.

I don't even want to mention the street lights that's on during the day and of at night. When you try and phone the "Help Line "during the evenings that is also a waste of the tax payer's money. The overtime the people get and the service that is rendered doesn't come to terms.

When and where all of this is going to end only God knows. - Phillip Meyer

@ Mike – put my name on that list please. I don't think you will have any trouble in compiling a list of willing, disgruntled consumers. It's what to do to ensure effective action is taken that will be a problem. I believe that there is tremendous corruption in local government. If council management continue to employ uneducated, untrained and ineffectual staff, they can ensure that they have a bunch of 9 to 5 "workers" who don't care to ask too many questions or rock the gravy boat. – Lynette

How was the "service charge" allowed to be gazetted? What additional service is being provided that was not provided before, necessitating a "service charge". When I make enquiries with Joburg, the call centre clerk tells me it is for reading the meter. R270 for reading a meter? What about this street sweeping levy. The council sends a hit squad of about 100 cleaners to blitz the neighborhood in one day. That was four months ago. The neighborhood looks like a tip again. What are we paying for? It may be more cost effective and result in a cleaner neighborhood to organize our own street sweeping and refuse removal if you consider that each household is being billed over R100 for the aforementioned services. – Neuren Pietersen