Good Afternoon, Mhlali
Last year, you signed our petition on the DTIC Credit Regulations. The Minister withdrew the regulations. That is what organised citizen voice looks like when it works.
I’m writing to you today because there is another fight underway, and this one is bigger. Government has published the Reviewed Draft White Paper on Local Government (the overarching policy document about municipalities). It is the most significant reform of the municipal system since 1998. The public comment deadline is nine days away, on 28 May 2026.
The White Paper will determine how municipalities are structured, how they are funded, how corruption is (or is not) dealt with, and whether ordinary South Africans will ever have a real say in how our municipalities operate. It will shape the future of service delivery in the country.
We have been working on local government accountability for the past year. Before the petition, we ran a public survey in 2025 (347 South Africans participated) and submitted the results directly to the Minister of Cooperative Governance. Five of the fourteen recommendation themes we developed from those responses appear in the revised White Paper.
We are running a follow-up survey now. It shows you what the draft White Paper proposes on each major issue (corruption, municipal finance, leadership standards, coalition governance, service delivery, public participation) and asks you whether the government has done enough. 15 min is all it takes to complete the survey. Your responses become part of BGI’s formal public comment submission to COGTA.
You don’t need to be an expert. You don’t need to know what the White Paper says before you start (we tell you, AND we give you the full 124 pages if you want to read it yourself). You need only to have an opinion about whether your municipality is working, and whether you think government’s proposals are serious enough to fix it. If the answer is no (or not yet) this survey is your mechanism to say so on the record, with your name attached, before the deadline closes. Almost 200,000 people stopped one bad regulation. Imagine what the same number could do to shape twenty-five years of local government reform.
The survey is at : https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/fQ6Nsyj7Ta
You can also read our latest newsletter, which gives a little more detail on the following link: https://fightingforbetter.substack.com/p/your-voice-is-again-needed-to-fix
Thank you again for being part of our efforts to create a better South Africa. Our survey closes on 27 May, so we can timeously submit to COGTA by the 28th. As always, please also share this with anyone you know who cares about where our country and their municipality is going. The more voices we bring, the harder we are to ignore.
Sincerely,
Sabelo Chalufu
Founder and Director, Better Governance Initiative NPC
https://fightingforbetter.substack.com | www.bettergovernance.org.za | @BetterGovZA