Ditsobotla votes on 4 November with the toilets still broken
Residents of the North West municipality say they will use the local government election to punish the parties that left their sanitation services in ruins.
Voters in Ditsobotla Local Municipality will cast their ballots on 4 November with broken sanitation still at the top of their list of grievances, and residents say the vote is their chance to remove the parties they blame for it.
Sanitation is among the service delivery failures that people in the community have been complaining about, and it is the issue they return to when asked what they want the election to change. eNCA reported this week that residents in the municipality see the poll as a choice about which party can rid them of the problems they have lived with, and that sanitation sits among the failures they name.
The broadcaster’s Bafedile Moerane has been speaking to residents about their concerns and about the change they want to see once they have voted. What they describe is a municipality where the basic work of keeping human waste away from homes and streets has not been done, and where the election is being treated as the moment to settle that account.
Local government elections are decided on the delivery of exactly these services. A municipality that cannot manage sanitation is failing at one of its core constitutional duties, and the residents who bear that failure are the ones who will decide on 4 November whether the parties in charge deserve another term.
Ditsobotla sits in the North West, a province where several municipalities have struggled to keep basic services running. The election gives voters there a direct say over who runs the systems that are supposed to keep their towns clean and safe.
The parties contesting the municipality will spend the remaining days before the poll asking for a mandate. The residents who spoke to eNCA have a simpler question for them, which is what they will do about the sanitation that has not worked.
This paper will follow the Ditsobotla results as they are declared and will report what the incoming council says it will do about the services residents have identified as their priority.
Source: eNCA, Local government election 2026: Ditsobotla residents still waiting on sanitation
