SAMWU CONDEMNS NATIONAL TREASURY AS MUNICIPAL WORKERS ARE DENIED SALARIES

24 JULY 2026

SAMWU CONDEMNS NATIONAL TREASURY AS MUNICIPAL WORKERS ARE DENIED SALARIES

The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) condemns the deepening salary crisis confronting municipal workers following National Treasury’s reckless and irrational decision to withhold equitable share allocations from selected municipalities.

When National Treasury announced the withholding of the July 2026 equitable share, SAMWU warned that the decision would have serious and entirely foreseeable consequences. We cautioned that municipalities would be unable to pay workers’ salaries, pension and medical aid contributions, honour third-party deductions, pay service providers and sustain the delivery of essential public services.

National Treasury nevertheless assured the country that its decision would have no impact on service delivery. That assurance has now been exposed as dangerously detached from the lived realities of municipalities, workers and communities.

Today was supposed to be a day on which municipal workers received not only their salaries, but also their scheduled salary increases. Instead, thousands of workers have been left without their salaries and without the increases that were due to improve their already strained household incomes.

Workers had planned their lives and financial commitments around receiving these salaries and increases. They now face the double injustice of being denied both the wages they have already earned and the salary adjustments they were entitled to receive.

The evidence before SAMWU demonstrates that this crisis is no longer confined to one municipality or one province.

In the Free State, at least five municipalities have formally communicated their inability to pay salaries or confirmed further delays:

Maluti-a-Phofung Local Municipality;
Mantsopa Local Municipality;
Mafube Local Municipality;
Mohokare Local Municipality; and
Masilonyana Local Municipality.
In several of these municipalities, workers have not received salaries dating back to June 2026. SAMWU has also received reports that workers at Kopanong Local Municipality have not been paid, despite the municipality having issued no formal communication explaining the situation to employees.

In the Northern Cape, workers at Thembelihle, Renosterberg and !Kheis municipalities have experienced delayed salary payments, while workers at Kareeberg Local Municipality have been informed that they will only receive payment on Monday.

In KwaZulu-Natal, workers at iMpendle Local Municipality are also affected by delayed or non-payment of salaries.

In the North West, workers at Tswaing Local Municipality remain affected, with outstanding June and July salaries delayed while the municipality awaits the balance of its equitable share allocation.

In Limpopo, Mopani District Municipality managed to pay workers despite not receiving its equitable share. However, the municipality’s ability to pay salaries next month is now in serious doubt. This demonstrates that even municipalities that have temporarily shielded workers from the immediate consequences are being pushed towards a financial cliff.

This crisis must be understood in its proper context. Some municipalities were already experiencing serious cash-flow and revenue-collection challenges. National Treasury’s withholding of the equitable share has not corrected these problems. It has worsened them, removed an essential financial lifeline and increased the likelihood that more workers will go unpaid in the coming weeks.

The equitable share is not a favour or a discretionary gift from National Treasury. It is a constitutionally recognised allocation intended to enable municipalities to fulfil their developmental and service-delivery obligations.

Municipalities cannot be deprived of these resources and still be expected to operate as though nothing has happened. Behind every unpaid salary is a worker and a family being pushed deeper into poverty.

Municipal workers have bonds and rent to pay. They must buy food, pay school fees and transport costs, purchase electricity, maintain insurance policies and provide for their children and other dependants. Their financial obligations do not disappear simply because National Treasury has decided to withhold municipal funding.

The salary increases that workers were due to receive today were not luxuries. They were meant to assist workers in coping with the rising cost of food, transport, electricity, housing and other necessities. Denying workers both their salaries and their increases compounds the hardship imposed upon their families.

Workers who have rendered their labour are now expected to return home empty-handed and explain why there is no food on the table, why children cannot travel to school, why electricity cannot be purchased and why debit orders cannot be honoured.

SAMWU calls on the Minister of Finance and the National Treasury officials responsible for this decision to search their consciences. The Minister and Treasury officials have received their salaries and any adjustments due to them. Their children have food to eat, transport to school and warm homes in which to sleep. Their bonds, pension contributions, medical aid payments and other financial commitments continue to be honoured.

Yet, through decisions taken from the comfort of their offices, they have relegated municipal workers and their families to hunger, debt, humiliation and poverty.

What conscience permits public officials to receive their full salaries while implementing decisions that deny other workers the wages they have already earned?

What kind of fiscal discipline punishes refuse collectors, water workers, electricians, general workers and administrative employees for failures committed by municipal managers, senior officials and political office-bearers?

Municipal workers did not adopt unfunded budgets. They did not authorise irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure. They did not fail to implement consequence management. They did not create the financial crisis confronting local government.

Yet workers and poor communities have been selected to carry the burden. This is not fiscal discipline. It is collective punishment.

Public services are delivered by workers. Water does not flow because of Treasury circulars. Refuse is not collected through spreadsheets. Electricity networks are not maintained through austerity measures. Roads, sanitation systems and water infrastructure are maintained by workers whose labour sustains communities every day.

Workers cannot be expected to subsidise the state through unpaid labour. A municipality that cannot pay its workforce cannot credibly be expected to maintain uninterrupted service delivery.

National Treasury’s decision is creating the very conditions for the further collapse of local government. It is worsening municipal debt, threatening third-party payments, exposing workers to bank charges and adverse credit records, and destabilising municipalities that were already financially vulnerable.

The present crisis confirms the correctness of the issues raised by SAMWU during its National Day of Action on 9 July 2026. Municipal workers marched because National Treasury has become a recurring obstacle to the proper functioning, funding and transformation of local government.

SAMWU warned that Treasury’s austerity programme, the chronic underfunding of municipalities and its continued interference in local government would ultimately destroy public services and impoverish workers. The salary crisis now spreading across the country is the foreseeable consequence of a policy against which the Union repeatedly warned.

If National Treasury genuinely intended to assist dysfunctional municipalities, it could have worked with the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs and the relevant provincial governments to implement targeted interventions under section 139 of the Constitution.

Such interventions could have addressed failures in governance, financial management and accountability without depriving innocent workers of their salaries, salary increases and dignity, and without denying communities essential public services.

Instead, National Treasury selected the most destructive option available: financially strangling entire municipalities and leaving workers and communities to absorb the consequences.

SAMWU therefore demands:

The immediate release of all outstanding equitable share allocations to affected municipalities.
The immediate payment of all outstanding June and July salaries.
The payment of the salary increases due to municipal workers without further delay.
The immediate payment of pension, medical aid, bargaining council contributions and all other third-party deductions.
Protection and compensation for workers who incur bank charges, penalties, adverse credit consequences and other financial losses because of delayed salaries.
Urgent intervention by the President, Cabinet, COGTA and the relevant provincial governments.
Personal accountability for municipal officials and political office-bearers responsible for financial misconduct, rather than the collective punishment of workers and communities.
National government must urgently rein in National Treasury before this manufactured crisis spreads to more municipalities and brings public services to a complete standstill.

The Union places the Minister of Finance and National Treasury on notice: every day that workers remain unpaid deepens their anger and frustration. Government cannot expect labour peace while workers who have performed their duties are denied their salaries and salary increases, and their families are forced into poverty.

Municipal workers are not expendable. Their children are no less deserving of food, education, warmth and dignity than the children of ministers and senior government officials.

Issued by SAMWU Secretariat

Dumisane Magagula, General Secretary, (076 580 4029) or Sam Lekhuleni, Deputy General Secretary (082 526 6639) or Papikie Mohale, National Media Officer (076 795 8670)