President Cyril Ramaphosa speaking at the President’s Coordinating Council at Birchwood Hotel in Ekurhuleni.
- President Cyril Ramaphosa urged municipalities to translate national gains in easing load shedding and improving logistics into tangible local delivery that businesses and communities can feel.
- He warned that the water crisis is deepening, with interruptions increasing and metros losing significant volumes of water before billing due to ageing infrastructure, poor maintenance and instability.
- Ramaphosa called for reforms at local level, including cutting red tape, appointing officials on merit and strengthening skills to unlock economic growth and attract investment.
President Cyril Ramaphosa says progress made nationally in easing load shedding and improving logistics must now be felt at local level, with municipalities leading delivery. He was addressing mayors, premiers and officials at the President’s Coordinating Council (PCC) in Boksburg on Wednesday.
This was the first time the PCC had met at that level since Ramaphosa announced interventions for the water crisis at the State of the Nation Address in February.
He said: “Municipalities must be at the frontline of delivery, ensuring that industrial parks have power, township streets are lit, [and] businesses can operate with confidence.
“We must therefore also focus on cutting the red tape to enable businesses to operate so that our tax base [and] our rate base can also increase.”
He said bureaucratic delays are driving investment away and shutting out the very entrepreneurs that the country needs to grow and crowd into the local economy.
“We must take steps also to focus on another important area of governance, which is to professionalise the public service also at the local level.
“Appointments must be made on merit, not on whether somebody is popular in a political party,” Ramaphosa said.
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The president also emphasised the importance of training and upskilling people who work for local government, and said this must be training that should be “lifelong”.
He also called for local government to build up the skills and capabilities of people who work for it.
“There is no reason why, working together, we cannot overcome. The challenges that we face at the local government level are to ensure that our municipalities are effective drivers of growth and development, particularly economic growth.”
He reminded the mayors that economic growth resides at the local level and not at Union Buildings level.
Ramaphosa said:
One of the most immediate challenges that affects almost every municipality is the crisis in the provision of water and sanitation. That is why we have dedicated a significant portion of the agenda of this meeting to addressing this challenge.
“And we’ll be addressing it from a diagnostic point of view and the solutions point of view, as well as how best that all should be fed.”
Ramaphosa added that there was no doubt that, over the past three decades of democracy, great progress had been made in extending access to water.
President @CyrilRamaphosa delivers opening remarks at the Extended President’s Coordinating Council (PCC) Meeting in the City of Ekurhuleni, Gauteng.
President emphasised the need for a coordinated response across all three spheres of government to address the country’s water… pic.twitter.com/0SGI8MqHSU
— The Presidency 🇿🇦 (@PresidencyZA) April 30, 2026
“According to the last census in 2022, more than 82% of households in our country have access to pipe water inside their homes or in their yards, up from 61% in 1990. However, as the 2024 general household survey showed, many communities experience problems with the reliability and quality of these services.
“The percentage of households that experience water interruptions lasting for more than two days at a time – and sometimes they go on much longer – has increased from 24% in 2012 to 34% in 2024.
“We are all familiar with the main reasons for the growing frequency and extent of water disruptions,” Ramaphosa said.
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He said these causes were ageing infrastructure, illegal connections, poor maintenance, and institutional instability.
“Our eight metropolitan municipalities are collectively losing an average of 34% of all water purchased before it can be billed; some metros are approaching almost 50%. Municipal debts to water boards have tripled between 2018 and 2025.
“Now, this crisis did not emerge overnight and will not be resolved by any single intervention. We need a range of actions addressing critical areas of failure,” Ramaphosa said, adding that the gathering should emerge with solutions.
