- Provincial Treasury classifies Collins Chabane as financially distressed, with property-rate collection at just 31%.
- Repairs and maintenance are only 3% against the 8% norm, while the municipality faces a roads and stormwater backlog of approximately 3,364 km.
- The DA calls for urgent action to strengthen revenue collection, prioritise infrastructure maintenance, accelerate grant spending and enforce consequence management.
Collins Chabane Local Municipality is financially distressed, with property-rate collection at just 31% and repairs and maintenance at only 3% against the 8% norm, while residents face deteriorating infrastructure and persistent service-delivery backlogs. The DA calls for urgent corrective action to strengthen revenue collection, prioritise infrastructure maintenance, accelerate the spending of available grant funding and enforce proper consequence management.
A Limpopo Provincial Treasury State of Municipal Finance report exposes a municipality caught in a damaging cycle of weak revenue collection, inadequate maintenance, poor grant spending and weak consequence management.
Treasury describes Collins Chabane as grant dependent, with limited own-revenue streams, and warns that very low revenue collection threatens the municipality’s financial sustainability and risks worsening its cash-flow constraints.
Weak revenue collection is at the heart of the problem. Property-rate collection stands at just 31%, while refuse collection is only 38%.
The consequences are visible in communities. Repairs and maintenance amount to only 3% against the 8% norm. Treasury records 4,951 households without refuse collection due to a lack of resources and a roads and stormwater backlog of approximately 3,364 km.
Treasury directly links the poor condition of roads and stormwater infrastructure to limited financial resources and insufficient spending on repairs and maintenance.
But Collins Chabane cannot plead poverty while failing to spend the infrastructure funding already available to it.
Municipal Infrastructure Grant expenditure stood at only 59.2% by 31 March 2026, against the expected 75%. Provincial Treasury warns that weak conditional-grant spending places funding at risk of withholding or reallocation — money Collins Chabane can ill afford to lose while infrastructure and service-delivery backlogs remain.
Management weaknesses are making the situation worse. Treasury identifies unreconciled valuation rolls, incomplete billing, large amounts of outstanding debt that may never be collected, inadequate credit-control procedures and waste-management tariffs that do not cover the cost of providing the service.
There is also little evidence of effective consequence management. The municipality’s own figures show R32.3 million in unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure with no recorded progress by the end of March, while Provincial Treasury records that Collins Chabane is not referring UIFWE cases to the Municipal Financial Misconduct Board for investigation.
A municipality cannot plead poverty while failing to collect its revenue, maintain its infrastructure, spend its grants and act against financial misconduct.
The DA’s approach is clear: collect revenue properly, maintain infrastructure before it fails, spend public money where it is needed, appoint capable officials and hold those responsible to account.
Collins Chabane must urgently fix its billing and debt-collection systems, prioritise infrastructure maintenance, accelerate grant spending, enforce proper consequence management and fast-track implementation of its electricity distribution licence to broaden its revenue base.
Residents should not have to endure deteriorating roads, failing stormwater infrastructure and inadequate refuse services because of weak financial management.