The 51% compliance figure is the number that should worry South Africa’s ratepayers and investors most. Parliament heard in 2024 that only half of the country’s municipalities complied with their own Spatial Development Framework, the document that determines where development takes place and how roads, water and other services will be funded to support it. Weak compliance carries a direct fiscal risk: developments get approved because land is cheap or developers apply pressure, even when the services to support them have never been planned or budgeted, leaving municipalities to absorb the cost later.
The argument comes from a researcher who leads South Africa’s SARChI Chair for Inclusive Cities and authored Spatial Planning in Service Delivery: Towards Distributive Justice in South Africa. With local government elections set for 5 November 2026, the researcher argues that voters hold more leverage over municipal budgets than they realise, and that the real spending decisions are made at the planning and budgeting stage, long before potholes, water outages and missed refuse collections become visible political fights.
Town planning, the researcher contends, is the most under-discussed and under-resourced function of local government, and it is where public pressure is most likely to change how money moves. Planning determines where people may live, work and move, at what density, and on whose land. Yet in many municipalities, citizens and politicians argue over visible problems such as traffic, housing shortages, informal settlements and poor services while paying too little attention to the function that causes or prevents them.
Budget lines matter as much as compliance figures. In smaller and rural municipalities, the more common and more fixable problem is not corruption but simple capacity: no one is employed to do the planning work at all. Residents are advised to ask how many qualified planners their municipality employs. Corruption must be investigated where it exists, but an empty desk needs a budget line and a hiring freeze lifted. Knowing which problem a municipality faces changes what voters should demand.
Meanwhile, oversight of the Municipal Planning Tribunal offers another lever with cost implications. The Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act moved rezoning decisions from provincial government down to municipal tribunals, placing them closer to the people they affect and giving residents the right to find out who approved a development and to appeal against it. Cape Town’s tribunal has recently faced allegations that it changed its planning bylaw so members could take a short break after their 10 year terms ended and then return, potentially eroding the tribunal’s independence. Residents can ask who sits on their tribunal, how members are appointed, and how decisions are published and appealed.
The largest capital question sits in housing. South Africa is short between 2.1 million and 2.6 million homes, and more than two million households live in over 4,000 informal settlements. In several major cities, municipal planners now acknowledge that most people who need housing are already living in informal settlements rather than waiting for formal houses elsewhere. Planners argue municipalities should spend more on water, toilets, electricity and roads where people already live, rather than building new housing on undeveloped land far from jobs and public transport. The test for voters is a simple one: ask what percentage of the housing budget goes to upgrading existing informal settlements and what percentage goes to new developments. The answer shows where the council’s priorities lie.
Transport spending is a related test of whether capital is being wasted. Municipal transport and land departments often work separately, so thousands of homes get approved without better transport, and poorer residents pay through longer, more expensive journeys. Voters can ask whether development and transport plans are linked and whether the two departments make decisions together.
Two further actions round out the list. Conventional planning was designed around a male commuter travelling in a straight line to a single workplace, ignoring how women, caregivers and informal traders actually move, with multi-stop, off-peak and safety-conscious trips. Lobbying for street lighting, clear lines of sight, safe paths and well-placed facilities such as toilet blocks and taxi ranks is central to public safety. Finally, municipalities publish Integrated Development Plans setting out the budget for all upgrades and service delivery. When a plan names informal settlement upgrading as a priority, residents can quote it back, line item by line item, at the next budget meeting. Whether they do so before the November 2026 vote may decide how the next five years of municipal money gets spent.