Ekurhuleni's taps run dry and its streets open up while four candidates ask for your vote
Boksburg broadcast puts the metro's water interruptions, sewage spills and sinkholes in front of the mayoral race, with the ANC, DA, EFF and FF Plus all setting out how they would run the place.
Water that does not come out of the tap. Sewage where it should not be. Ground that opens under a street. That is the daily account for residents of Ekurhuleni, and it is the ground on which four candidates are now asking to run the metro.
Ekurhuleni carries a large share of Gauteng’s industrial economy, with factories, businesses and workers inside its boundaries. The metro is also carrying a set of problems that reach households directly, and eNCA’s election edition on the metro set them out on Sunday.
The metro’s audit outcome is qualified, which means the auditor could not sign off on the books as presented. Money owed to the metro in traffic fines, running into billions of rand, is regarded as unlikely ever to come back. Electricity losses remain a serious worry. Around and above all of that sit questions about who answers for what, quarrelling inside the council, and matters that have come out of the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry.
For residents the consequences are concrete. Water supply is interrupted. Sewage spills. Sinkholes open. Local businesses battle to keep operating under those conditions.
Public safety has drawn scrutiny of its own after women’s bodies were found in the metro, a discovery that led to a presidential address and to renewed demands that justice be done.
Against that backdrop the parties wanting to lead Ekurhuleni have set out what they would do about service delivery, financial management, infrastructure and safer communities. The ANC’s candidate for mayor is Nkosindiphile Xhakaza. The DA has put up Khathutshelo Rasilingwane. The EFF’s candidate is Ntabiseng Tshivenga, and the FF Plus is fielding Jennifer Glover.
What the four are offering is a set of priorities rather than a record in office, and voters in the metro will weigh those priorities against conditions they already know first hand. A household that has gone without water, or watched a spill spread past its gate, does not need the case argued. It needs to know which of these four can make the taps run and keep the ground closed.
The financial picture is the harder constraint. A qualified audit and fine revenue that is not expected to be collected limit what any incoming leadership can spend, and electricity losses eat into the metro’s position further. Council infighting has its own cost, because a municipality that cannot hold a stable line on decisions struggles to hold a line on delivery too.
The Madlanga Commission of Inquiry remains part of the picture the candidates inherit, and so does the public safety question raised by the killings. Each of the four has had to say something about safety, about the books, about infrastructure and about services, because those are the four places where residents measure the metro.
On the evidence of the broadcast, the contest in Ekurhuleni is being fought over the basics. Water, sewage, roads, money and safety. The candidates have named their priorities. Residents will judge them against what comes out of the tap and what stays buried under the tar.
Source: eNCA, We The Nation election edition on Ekurhuleni, 25 October 2026
