Metros can drive growth — if our leaders get serious

You must have been surprised when, on September 16, the Electoral Commission of South Africa told us an unprecedented 136 790 candidates have satisfied the statutory requirements to contest seats across our country’s eight metropolitan municipalities, 44 district municipalities and 205 local municipalities.

Of the candidates, 98 219 are nominated by parties to represent wards and 38 571 to represent parties in the proportional representation elections; 621 candidates are independents nominated to represent wards.

In our largest municipalities we find more than 55 parties contesting the elections, which means that when you vote in these areas, you will have a ballot with double columns to accommodate so many parties. And your ward ballot forms will be equally long in these areas: Ward 18 in the City of Johannesburg has 63 candidates standing, many standing for parties with similar names!

While you might cynically say such contestation is because councillors earn a lot in metros, the reality is that it is because across the world, the largest urban areas are the engines of growth. South Africa is no exception. That is why it is no accident that our political, business and civil society leaders across our country focus on getting our cities right.

The questions we must be asking are whether the administrative, political and non-governmental leaderships driving the metropolitan areas are in fact fit for purpose.

South Africa’s largest urban areas have the potential to be engines of economic growth

South Africa has more than 20 major and intermediate metropolitan areas, unlike many countries that are dominated by a single city. The largest is the sprawling Gauteng conurbation, where it is often hard to tell where Johannesburg ends and Ekurhuleni or Tshwane begin. When the areas struggle, their provinces and the country as a whole feel it.

South Africa is highly urbanised for sub-Saharan Africa, with well over 80% of our people living on under 2% of our land area. Our eight Category A metros grew from around 6.2 million to almost 8 million households between 2011 and 2022, an additional 1.8 million households all needing water, sanitation and electricity, while informal households in the metros fell from 11.2 million to 8.5 million over the same period.

In this regard, what the census shows us is that while informal settlements have remained, people living in these areas have started formalising housing in these areas.

If we take the largest 13 municipalities — eight metropolitan areas plus Emfuleni, Polokwane, Mbombela, Msunduzi and Rustenburg — we find that they house 45% of all South African households and more than two-thirds of the GDP of South Africa.

The 13 municipalities also generate more than 70% of all personal income tax assessed by the South African Revenue Service, with Johannesburg accounting for 18%, followed by Cape Town (13%), Tshwane (12%), Ekurhuleni (9%) and eThekwini (8%).

They also carry the weight of local government finance: combined budgets of roughly R355 billion make up almost 60% of all municipal spending nationally, against R261 billion shared among the remaining 249 municipalities.

Yet Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni plan to spend only 7% of their budgets on capital works this year. With the exception of Cape Town, every Category A metro has seen its share of capital expenditure decline, alongside weak repairs and maintenance spending.

All 13 of the municipalities trigger at least one statutory threshold requiring financial intervention.

They generate 66% of South Africa’s GDP. Why, then, as our engines of growth, are they only in second gear?

Lessons from successful international cities

South Africa need not start from scratch. We can draw on many examples, without even having to visit them.

Curitiba, in Brazil, pioneered bus rapid transit in the 1970s by tying transport corridors directly to zoning and land-use planning, so that density followed the routes people could reach, an approach Bogotá later scaled up dramatically through its TransMilenio system, delivering rapid transit access to millions at a fraction of the cost of a metro rail network.

South Africa’s own Rea Vaya, MyCiTi and Go! Durban systems drew on this model but have not achieved what they could because transport investment works best planned and delivered together with land use and housing, not bolted on afterwards.

Singapore offers a different lesson in institutional design, using land value capture and a single, powerful planning authority to fund and coordinate public housing, transport and economic development as one system rather than competing mandates.

London illustrates a third path: since 2000, the Greater London Authority has given the city an elected mayor with authority over transport, policing and strategic planning across 32 boroughs, using tools such as the 2003 congestion charge to fund public transport from the costs road users impose on the city. The common thread is coordinated authority, over land, transport or finance, capable of executing consistently over the long term.

More recently, though, Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York City has shown the city that delivery starts with being transparent and responsive and the turnaround there is significant.

These are the sort of governance capabilities our metros most need to strengthen and build.

Balancing economic development, housing, transport and environmental sustainability

Growth and coordination alone will not be enough if our cities remain fragmented.

Forced removals, return migration and decades of treating African South Africans as transient urban workers built a highly unequal space economy that persists today. A township worker might spend R100 a day and three to five hours commuting, often returning to a neighbourhood without proper street lighting or pavements, while residents of former township areas continue to have poorer access to healthcare, social services and other amenities than residents of former white areas.

Twenty years into democracy, patterns of racial and income segregation have barely shifted, with gated, walled prosperity increasingly surrounded by underserved informal settlements.

Climate change adds urgency: stronger winds and heavier rains are no longer exceptional, and our urban planning must stop locating our poorest and most vulnerable residents in areas exposed to flooding and other climate risks, while our emergency services need real capacity to respond rapidly in informal areas.

To their credit, South African cities have shown genuine leadership in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and shaping global climate initiatives. Our Free Basic Services and Human Settlements programmes are cited internationally as best practice.

Building on the record means treating economic growth, housing, transport and environmental resilience as one connected challenge rather than four separate ones.

That requires new urban rules and better planning and design, backed by real developmental finance to get plans built, alongside filling vacancies with appropriately qualified people, making land available, speeding up processes such as building-plan approvals and dealing decisively with the corruption that continues to undermine delivery in every sphere of government.

Above all, it requires a shared mindset, across race, class and political lines, that we are building these cities together.

In this equation we have to realise that National Treasury is far too compliance driven and allocates far too little of the national fiscus for municipal developments. We cannot plan large municipalities on a year-to-year basis without an integrated approach and without long-term funding streams.

Overall, we must change our mindset. We must start realising that increasing transparency and responsiveness will build the partnerships with civil society, business and labour that we do not have. We must become more developmental because there are too many rent seekers intervening in development processes through corruption or influencing processes. All planning and development approvals must be evaluated and delivered timeously on the basis that collectively, they address economic, financial, social and resilience needs.

If our metros are to be genuine engines of growth, these are some of the gaps that must close.

It starts with the political and administrative leaderships of all spheres of government changing their mindsets to become far more developmental.

It starts with you finding out what experience and answers, not promises, you need from the leaders you elect at a ward or party level on November 4.