Storms expose the reality of Cape Town’s services

The devastating storms that recently struck Cape Town exposed more than damaged roads, flooded homes, and blocked drains. They tore away the City’s carefully constructed public image and laid bare a governance failure years in the making, one built on double standards, chronic underinvestment, and the quiet abandonment of Cape Town’s most vulnerable communities.

For years, residents have been told that services are delivered equally across the city. The Mayor has repeatedly assured Cape Town that it is a world-class city where all communities matter equally.

Yet the City’s own 2026/27 Draft Schedule of Service Delivery Standards tells a very different story; the storm has forced that story into the open. The rain is not an act of the Democratic Alliance.

But the flooding, the blocked stormwater systems, the missing manhole covers, the failed cleaning schedules, the neglected Cape Flats infrastructure, and the repeated suffering of residents are a governance failure. Cape Town does not need a special winter campaign to do what residents already pay for every single day. Cleaning, stormwater maintenance, road safety, refuse removal, and drainage capacity are not seasonal luxuries.

They are basic municipal responsibilities, and residents are being forced to pay more for them every year, including through fixed charges the Western Cape High Court has already found unlawful.

The City’s own service delivery schedule confirms what communities have long experienced. Street cleaning in the CBD takes place daily. For the rest of Cape Town, the standard simply states: “Ad hoc service.”

That single phrase tells residents everything they need to know. In the CBD, cleaning is regular, intensive, and boundary-to-boundary. On the Cape Flats, roads are cleaned on an ad hoc basis, sandy road reserves blow debris into stormwater systems, and waste that would never be tolerated in commercial areas builds up unchecked until the first heavy rain turns streets into rivers. The City then blames residents for dumping.

But its own policy fails to guarantee the preventative services that would stop waste from accumulating in the first place. There is no measurable standard for drain cleaning, no routine stormwater maintenance schedule, and no winter preparedness plan for residential communities. These are not optional extras. They are the basics. Informal settlements fare even worse. The schedule mentions only that waste removal bags are provided, with no indication of frequency, response times, or maintenance standards. Illegal dumping clearance is described as dependent on “resource availability,” meaning communities wait indefinitely.

Residents are entitled to ask where their rates and tariffs are actually going. Missing and broken manhole covers compound the danger. Residents place tyres and stones near open manholes to protect their lives and are then blamed when those objects enter the drainage system. The DA cannot allow infrastructure to collapse and then punish residents for trying to protect their families.

The Mayor recently praised Mitchells Plain as an affordable place to live. That same community is now underwater. Major road upgrades mean nothing when the stormwater infrastructure beneath them cannot cope. Development without drainage is not progress. It is a planning failure dressed up with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Residents must hold their councillors accountable for the budgets they vote for. If councillors support budgets that underfund maintenance, ignore stormwater capacity, and prioritise optics over infrastructure, they must answer to the communities who bear the consequences.

The GOOD Party will continue fighting for allocations that reach the people who need them most. A world-class city is not measured by clean tourist corridors. It is measured by whether the underground systems hold when the storm arrives.

* Little is City of Cape Town GOOD Caucus Leader