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The stark picture painted in The Herald on May 28 — a business community delivering a “snotklap” assessment, residents marching in desperation, and a metro losing 63% of its water — demands we ask tough questions about leadership and accountability.
The question is not whether leaders inherited problems. It is whether they are taking responsibility for solving them.
The Reality Check
When residents go five months without water, when 72 streets in Kariega simultaneously lose electricity, when the municipality has no asphalt contract since August 2025 —these are not unfortunate accidents.
They are the visible symptoms of leadership that have stopped functioning.
The business chamber’s assessment is unequivocal: governance has “buckled under political turbulence” and basic services are “no longer guaranteed but hoped for.” That is a leadership crisis.
Responsibility Means Owning Results
Yes, NMBM’s leaders inherited infrastructure deficits. But responsibility means owning the results on your watch, regardless of what you inherited. Leaders do not get to explain away failure—they are employed to deliver solutions despite obstacles.
Ward 51 councillor Roelf Basson, with 42 years of municipal experience, reports workers labouring past midnight because there are not enough artisans or proper equipment.
That is not a new problem. It is a chronic capacity issue that current leadership has failed to prioritise.
No asphalt contract for nine months?
That is on the current leadership.
Eight directorates without executive directors?
That is on the current leadership.
Water losses reaching 63% — the highest in South Africa —without triggering emergency intervention?
That is on the current leadership.
What Leaders Control
Leaders cannot control when floods happen, but they absolutely control how the municipality responds and communicates.
They cannot instantly fix decades of infrastructure neglect, but they control whether maintenance contracts are in place and whether available budget gets deployed.
They cannot eliminate coalition politics, but they control whether senior positions remain vacant for months.
These are controllable failures.
And until we stop firefighting crises while ignoring the systems that create them, nothing changes.
Sending water tankers to Tiryville addresses today’s emergency.
Building workforce capacity, filling executive positions, and establishing preventive maintenance systems address the root causes of the crisis.
The Accountability Gap
Real accountability means answering for what was within your power to change. Did you fill critical positions or leave them vacant? Did you maintain infrastructure or let contracts lapse? Did you build systems that prevent crises or just manage emergencies?
Business Chamber CEO Denise van Huyssteen said the crisis is “systemic and affected every municipal department responsible for delivering basic services.” That is not an excuse; it is an indictment. It means leadership has failed across the board, in every area of responsibility.
When she notes “the only opportunity for change would come through the local government elections on November 4,” she is stating plainly: this leadership group has exhausted its capacity to reform itself.
Why Learning Matters
Leadership’s first job is creating systems that learn from mistakes and adapt.
NMBM faced water warnings from 2015 to 2018.
Why didn’t that trigger sustainable capacity-building?
The business community has raised alarms for years. Why hasn’t that been translated into administrative action?
When the same problems recur—water, electricity, roads, communication — it proves the leadership system is not learning.
And leadership that does not learn cannot solve problems.
The Standard
The 250 residents who marched from Kariega are not interested in explanations about inherited difficulties.
They want leaders who take responsibility for fixing what is broken, both the immediate crisis and the broken systems perpetuating it.
DA MPL Retief Odendaal has asked the SA Human Rights Commission to investigate whether “the municipality’s governance, planning and budgeting systems were contributing to the problems.” That is the right question: Are current leaders using the power and resources they have effectively?
Busi Mavuso, CEO of Business Leadership SA, reminded us of the national stakes: “If Nelson Mandela Bay fails, it therefore fails the industry that can shift the economics of SA.
“It therefore disadvantages the majority of the citizens from accessing and participating in the economic mainstream.”
The Choice Ahead
Maggie Jacobs from Tiryville, who has had no water for five months and no electricity for four months, said: “I am sick and tired of our people suffering like this.”
That exhaustion is what happens when leadership stops taking responsibility.
The question for voters in November is straightforward: Do these leaders take responsibility for results, or do they offer explanations for failure?
Do they fill positions and fix infrastructure, or do they manage decline? Do they respond urgently while simultaneously building systems to prevent the next crisis?
Because right now, the evidence shows leadership that has lost the capacity to deliver.
And accountability means voters have the power — and the responsibility — to demand better.
- Deon Pretorius (PhD, Warwick, UK) is a Gqeberha-based development sociologist. He writes in his personal capacity
