R23 billion debt written off? Free State party says it will scrap it and put locals in the jobs
Voice for Change used its manifesto launch to promise that Machabang's utility bill to Eskom and the water board would go, and that a headcount would clear out ghost workers before residents get the posts.
A newly formed party has told voters in a small Free State municipality that it will make the town’s R23 billion utility debt disappear and hand the jobs back to the people who live there.
Voice for Change made the promise at its manifesto launch, held at a sports ground in Pumalong Haniman, ahead of the 2026 local government elections. The party says the municipality, Machabang, carries a combined bill of R23 billion owed to Eskom and to the water entity it named as V Central Water.
That figure is the party’s own and has not been independently verified. What is not in dispute is that the town’s utility account is the centre of its politics. A debt of that size would sit on every household in the municipality through tariffs, service cuts and the threat of disconnection, and it is the kind of number that decides how a local election is fought.
Voice for Change’s answer is a headcount. The party says it will begin by counting the staff on the municipality’s payroll, because, in its account, the mayor has already said on camera that the town is carrying a large number of ghost employees. Once those names are removed, the party says, the posts will go to residents of Machabang.
Speaking at the launch, a party representative put the hiring promise in the plainest terms, saying the party would employ the children of Machabang, the people of Machabang, in Machabang, and that this was where it would begin.
The same speaker said the party would make sure the community becomes part of the decisions on shortlisting and on who wins tenders, a promise aimed at the procurement process that local residents have long complained runs past them.
The party also said the municipality had previously created more than 2,000 jobs, a figure it gave without further detail, and framed the headcount as the way to protect those posts for local people rather than lose them to names that do not exist.
What Voice for Change has not said is how the R23 billion would actually be cleared. Writing off a utility debt is not something a municipality can do on its own say-so. Eskom and the water board are creditors, and the national government has repeatedly had to step in when municipal accounts to both collapse. Whether the party means to negotiate a write-off, restructure the debt, or simply stop paying is not clear from its launch.
The ghost employee claim is the more concrete half of the manifesto. It rests on the mayor’s own on-camera admission, according to the party, which means the ground is already prepared for an audit. A headcount is cheap, fast and hard to argue with. It also tends to find fewer ghosts than the political version of the story suggests, and the party will be judged on what the count actually produces.
The employment pledge carries its own test. Hiring only residents of Machabang would need to survive the municipal rules on fair appointment, and the promise to let the community sit in on shortlisting and tender adjudication would have to be squared with the procurement law that governs every council in the country.
For now the party has a clear message for a town carrying a bill it cannot pay and a payroll it does not trust. The election will decide whether Machabang believes the promise, and the headcount will decide whether the promise was real.
The Enquirer will follow the municipal payroll figures and the utility account as the campaign develops.
Source: SABC News, LGE 2026 | Newly formed party, Voice for Change intends to scrap Eskom debt
