Provincial intervention in North West municipalities

Eskom, water boards, and other key service providers are not being paid by the Ditsobotla and Naledi municipalities in the North West - despite end-users paying for services every month. Municipal collections from end-users continually disappear into a bottomless pit of corruption and growing wage bills. The Ditsobotla municipality is also one of the most dilapidated in the country, thus providing a favorable ground to test legal principles for resolving state decay. Sakeliga has succeeded in proving the unwillingness of the North West provincial government to intervene in the municipalities, thereby enforcing provincial administration. - By enforcing provincial administration in Ditsobotla and Naledi, the first step has been taken to force the state to exercise its powers within the framework of legislation to reverse the decay of the municipalities. - The strategy, of which the first step was successful, places the government at all levels in a position where it must either resolve state decay or, through failure, give litigants the space to gain legal recognition for creative private solutions outside the state.