Minister targets professionals to pressure municipalities on service delivery failures

Human Settlements Minister Thembi Simelane used a Thursday webinar to lay out exactly what she wants from South Africa’s educated, professionally connected citizens: not protest, not party politics, but structured, evidence-based pressure on the municipal systems responsible for delivering services and building infrastructure.

Speaking during The Platform weekly webinar series, Simelane described the mechanics of what she calls an “activist middle class” and the specific operational roles it should play in municipal service delivery. She was direct about what that activism should not look like. Social media outrage and party-political mobilisation are out. What she wants instead are citizens who are informed, organised, lawful and persistent, people who use their education, professional networks and institutional access to insist that government fulfills its obligations.

Five practical roles define her framework.

The first is sustained democratic oversight of municipal operations. Citizens should read Integrated Development Plans, municipal budgets, service-delivery plans and performance reports. They should participate in decision-making before key choices are finalised, use ward committees, petitions and public hearings, bring evidence to track undertakings, and return to establish what has actually changed. Simelane was clear that effective oversight does not merely expose failure; it makes avoidance more difficult and correction more likely. She urged citizens to keep it specific: identify a single broken commitment, establish which institution bears responsibility, agree on measurable evidence of progress, and maintain a record until a response arrives.

The second role is compliance and stewardship. Residents and businesses that can pay for municipal services must do so, while supporting transparent protection for households that cannot afford them. That means complying with planning and building rules, protecting public facilities, reporting failures responsibly, and rejecting illegal connections, vandalism and the normalisation of neglect.

Third, professionals must place their expertise at the service of communities and institutions. Engineers, planners, architects, lawyers, accountants, project managers, data specialists, academics and communicators can help communities understand plans, improve public proposals, mentor emerging professionals and contractors, and support clearly defined municipal challenges through professional bodies and universities. Simelane added a pointed caution here: such support must strengthen accountable institutions, not create unaccountable parallel structures that bypass them.

The fourth role concerns business conduct. Simelane called for a stronger ethical and transformative business culture in human settlements. Businesses operating in the sector must reject collusion, bribery, fronting and extortion; deliver quality work; comply with consumer-protection standards; pay smaller suppliers on time; and invest in skills and local supply chains. Public-private partnerships, she said, must mean shared risk, transparent value and public benefit, not the privatisation of decision-making.

The fifth role addresses economic inclusion. Across the department’s six entities, approved Annual Performance Plans set a minimum target of 40 percent of annual procurement spend for women-owned businesses. Simelane was careful to frame that target in operational terms: it must be measured by whether women can actually finance delivery, build a track record, employ people, secure subsequent contracts and progress into leadership across construction, property, finance, professional services and social housing. A procurement figure on paper means little if the underlying conditions prevent women from executing the work.

Meanwhile, Simelane outlined reciprocal obligations on the state’s side. Government must publish realistic and funded priorities, improve project preparation, provide clear feedback, make performance visible and act on failure and corruption. The accountability she is asking citizens to exercise, she acknowledged, only works if the state holds up its end.

She closed by calling on The Platform itself to focus its contribution on three questions: the specific local or settlement problem being addressed, the verifiable result that will demonstrate changed conditions, and what each participant, the state, business, professions and communities, will contribute within the law and a defined timeframe.

Whether the framework translates from a webinar into sustained municipal pressure on the ground is the test that remains.