SAMWU WELCOMES RELEASE OF MUNICIPAL EQUITABLE SHARE, BUT CONDEMNS THE HARM ALREADY INFLICTED ON WORKERS

July 28, 2026 adminPress

28 July 2026

The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) notes the announcement by National Treasury that it will finally release the equitable share allocations due to affected municipalities by 31 July 2026. While SAMWU welcomes this decision, we cannot simply move on as though nothing happened. The decision to withhold these allocations in the first place was reckless, ill-conceived and devoid of any appreciation of the realities confronting municipalities, workers and communities.

There was simply no logic in taking municipalities that were already experiencing severe financial difficulties, withholding an important source of their revenue and then expecting their financial position and service delivery capacity to somehow improve. From the moment National Treasury announced the withholding, SAMWU warned that the decision would have serious consequences. We warned that workers would not be paid, third-party deductions would not be honoured and public services would be placed at risk.

National Treasury nevertheless assured the country that the withholding would have no impact on service delivery. The experience of the past few weeks has demonstrated how dangerously misplaced that confidence was.

Municipal workers across several provinces have either not received their July salaries, received them late or faced uncertainty about when they would be paid. In some municipalities, workers were already owed salaries from June. This happened at precisely the time when municipal workers were also supposed to receive their salary increases together with their July salaries.

These workers had rendered their services. They continued collecting refuse, maintaining water and sanitation infrastructure, repairing roads, maintaining electricity networks and ensuring that municipalities continued functioning. Yet when payday came, many were left with nothing.

The consequences were not theoretical. Debit orders bounced. Workers could not meet their bond and rental payments. Families struggled to buy food. Parents had to worry about transporting their children to school. Workers faced penalties and the possibility of damage to their credit records because of a decision over which they had absolutely no control.

National Treasury must therefore not expect applause for extinguishing a fire that should never have been started in the first place. The release of the equitable share is welcomed because it will bring desperately needed relief to municipalities and workers, but it cannot erase the hardship unnecessarily inflicted on thousands of municipal workers and their families.

SAMWU maintains that the initial decision was an unacceptable form of collective punishment. Municipal workers did not adopt unfunded budgets. They did not authorise irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure. They did not fail to implement consequence management against municipal managers and senior officials. Yet, when National Treasury decided to impose consequences on municipalities, it was ordinary workers and communities who were made to pay.

This approach was neither developmental nor sustainable. If National Treasury was genuinely concerned about the financial health and governance of municipalities, there were other mechanisms available to government. Treasury could and should have worked with the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, provincial governments and municipalities on targeted interventions, including the constitutional mechanisms available under section 139 of the Constitution.

Municipalities have been allowed to linger in financial distress for far too long. Government cannot stand by while municipalities deteriorate year after year and then suddenly resort to drastic measures that threaten salaries and public services.Intervention must happen before municipalities reach the point of collapse.

SAMWU also agrees with the sentiments expressed by the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs that government departments and institutions that owe municipalities must be compelled to settle what they owe. Government cannot demand financial discipline from municipalities while its own departments fail to pay municipal accounts.

If municipalities are expected to pay Eskom, water boards, workers, pension funds, medical schemes, service providers and other creditors on time, then national and provincial government departments must equally pay municipalities what they owe, and they must do so on time.

There cannot be one standard of financial discipline for municipalities and another for other spheres of government. The financial crisis in local government requires an honest assessment of the entire municipal funding model. It cannot be reduced to punishment whenever municipalities fail. National government must confront the chronic underfunding of local government, poor revenue collection, government debt owed to municipalities, corruption, financial mismanagement and the failure to intervene early in municipalities that are clearly in distress.

As SAMWU, our interest remains straightforward. We want municipalities that are financially sustainable. We want municipalities that can pay workers their salaries and salary increases in full and on time. We want municipalities that pay pension funds, medical aid schemes, bargaining councils and all other third parties without using workers’ deductions to finance municipal operations.

Most importantly, we want municipalities that have the financial and human capacity to deliver quality services to residents. Accountability and service delivery should never be presented as competing objectives. Those responsible for financial misconduct must be held personally accountable, but workers and communities should never be collateral damage in the process.

We therefore call on National Treasury to ensure that the announced equitable share allocations are released to all municipalities by 31 July 2026 without further delay. Municipalities receiving these funds must, as an immediate priority, settle all outstanding workers’ salaries, implement the salary increases due to workers and pay all outstanding third-party contributions.

The events of this month must never be repeated and National Treasury must learn from the consequences of its decision and abandon interventions that seek to restore municipalities to financial health by first pushing them closer to financial collapse. Workers must never again be made to pay for failures they did not create.

Issued by SAMWU Secretariat

Dumisane Magagula
General Secretary
(076 580 4029)

Sam Lekhuleni
Deputy General Secretary
(082 526 6639)

Papikie Mohale
National Media Officer
076 795 8670