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The South African Communist Party (SACP) noted the community protests that took place in Tembisa on the 21st of July 2025, following tariff increases on water and electricity in the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality as imposed by the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) and the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA). The decision by the mayor and the municipality's leadership, following the protests, to halt the implementation of a municipal budget containing these increases is a commendable decision from our standpoint as the SACP. 

The majority of the citizens, as things stand today, struggle to afford basic services, which reflects a hostile economic environment that has adverse implications for the survival of the average working-class family and indeed an average citizen. In the face of these thoroughgoing economic limitations, animated at the highest level by increasing levels of unemployment, it is inconceivable for the SACP that a progressive and caring government would act in the manner it has in the name of a balanced budget. 

The South African Communist Party calls for a strategic relook of the present policy framework that is at the foundation of the decisions that have caused these increases to be intimated and finally decided upon.  

The SACP recognises financial strain on municipalities predicated, among others, on the overall state of the economy and an overriding neoliberal framework of the economy, leading to increased pressure on local government. Part of this pressure manifests in municipalities adopting unfunded budgets, thereby getting exposed to organisational risks that put their sustainability into doubt.  

This crisis requires a systematic intervention based on collaboration involving all spheres of government, placing the fate and interests of citizens above the bureaucratic rivalries and intra-government power struggles.  This cooperative and collaborative posture should help unpack the strategic and policy discord that has led to a pervasive crisis that threatens service delivery in different spheres of the state. 

Issued by the South African Communist Party