All eyes are currently on Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis as he tables the City’s draft budget for 2025/26 on Thursday morning.
Ambitiously dubbed the ‘Invested in Hope’ Budget, the public sentiment is that residents of the Mother City are expecting some much-needed reprieve amid soaring costs of living and skyrocketing unemployment rates.
The budget, according to the City, features an unprecedented infrastructure investment of R39.7 billion over three years, surpassing the combined total of all three Gauteng metros.
Hill-Lewis says, notably, 75% of this spending will be directed toward a suite of tariff restructuring reforms designed to provide relief to lower-income households.
Key measures include:
- Water and sanitation fixed charges will now be based on property value rather than connection size, reducing costs for lower-income residents
- While Eskom’s municipal electricity tariff increase is set at 11.32%, Cape Town customers will see an increase of just 2% on average. This is achieved by discontinuing the 10% contribution to other service delivery costs embedded in electricity rates.
- The City will continue its special protection for Lifeline electricity customers. The threshold for subsidised electricity purchases was increased from 350 to 600 units per month in 2023, and customers using 600 units in a month will continue to pay roughly the same as they did three years ago.
- Lifeline customers will remain exempt from fixed charges, while those on the Domestic Tariff will contribute a proposed fixed monthly fee of R59.90 to sustain electricity services. Despite this, their overall increase will remain much lower at 5%, compared to Eskom’s 11.32% hike.
The proposed budget also includes the largest single-year expansion of metro policing, with over 500 new officers set to be deployed across Cape Town – in addition to the 400 officers already introduced since the beginning of the current municipal term.
The expansion reportedly aims to bolster safety in communities and strengthen law enforcement capabilities citywide in response to
Cape Town’s property rates, according to the City, are set to remain the lowest among South Africa’s metros when measured using the rate-in-the-rand formula. Even with a planned 7.96% increase next year, the city’s property rates will still be lower than the current 2024 levels in all other metropolitan areas.
This increase, while slightly above inflation projections, will fund record infrastructure investments aimed at solidifying Cape Town’s vision as the ‘City of Hope for all’.
The budget also outlines a 7.36% annual increase in refuse removal fees to ensure sustainable waste management services for both formal and informal settlements in the rapidly growing metro.
From July, residents will also see a City-Wide Cleaning Tariff explicitly itemised on their bills. While this is not a new expense – previously covered through property rates – it will now be offset by the reduction in electricity costs allocated to other service delivery functions.
Mayor Hill-Lewis says the ‘Invested in Hope’ Budget signals a transformative step forward for Cape Town, combining financial prudence with targeted investments to enhance service delivery and improve the quality of life for residents.
GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor Anton Louw, however, argues in a statement that the budgets inclusion of various new ‘fix charges’ highlight the ‘consistent double standards by the DA’.
‘At first glance, the budget includes various new “fix charges” that the City calls “a reform to the current tariff structure”,’ says Louw.
‘The DA has opposed surcharges in Gauteng, arguing for fairness to its residents. But where the DA governs and has the ability to address these additional costs, the burden remains on residents.’
Regarding the City’s average tariff increase, Louw notes that while it is ‘good news’ that the City’s increase is 2% lower than that of the approved Eskom increase, it must be noted that ‘The City of Cape Town has charged above NERSA-approved tariffs for the past two years’.
Moving on to the City’s safety and security budget, Louw commented that the GOOD Party questions why the DA-led city continues to pour millions into reactive policing rather than focusing on prevention by addressing the root cause of crime.
Louw also argued that, in relation to the City’s ‘largest planned capital infrastructure investment’, the City fails to spend it each year.
‘Saying that the City of Cape Town has the largest Capital budget is great. However, it must be spent. Something this administration has failed to do every year,’ said Louw. ‘In the previous financial year 2024/35, the City underspent R1.6 billion of the Capital budget.’
In conclusion, Louw said: ‘What is clear from this draft budget is that the DA has chosen not to alleviate the financial strain on our communities’.
You can watch the full live stream of the budget council meeting here:
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Picture: Brenton Geach / Gallo Images
