Thirty years after democracy, Potchefstroom remains two cities in one.
Drive north-east, and you’ll find expanding suburbs, new reservoirs, reliable electricity, and property values that keep rising. Drive to Ikageng, Promosa, or Ventersdorp’s townships, and you’ll find crumbling infrastructure, sewage spills that go unchecked for months, dusty gravel roads, and a housing backlog of 20,000 units.
This is not an accident. It is the enduring legacy of apartheid spatial planning – reinforced by thirty years of market-driven development that has deepened inequality while claiming to address it.
The tender system that failed us
The recent crisis in JB Marks – the R2.9-billion in irregular expenditure, the moratorium on new development approvals, the national government intervention over sewage in the Mooi River – has a single root cause: a captured tender system that privatised municipal functions at astronomical cost while destroying permanent jobs.
When the municipality outsources core services to ‘tenderpreneurs’, everyone loses. Residents pay more for worse outcomes. Skilled municipal workers lose their jobs. Public funds disappear into private pockets. The N12 flood canal project tells the story: a contractor appointed in 2016 before funding existed, the project abandoned for three years, completed work deteriorated, and millions wasted on reconstruction.
Meanwhile, the municipality spends R41-million per month on external service providers – money that could employ permanent staff, buy equipment, and build internal capacity.
The spatial divide that won’t fix itself
But the tender system is only part of the problem. The deeper crisis is spatial.
Infrastructure investment flows to the northern suburbs because that’s where property values justify it. New developments expand the network for the already-served. Township networks decay because there’s no profit in maintaining them. When budgets are tight – and they always are – the rational choice within our current system is to prioritise those who pay more.
This is not corruption. It is the logic of the market. And it is reproducing apartheid geography more effectively than any Group Areas Act ever did.
What the parties offer
The 2026 elections offer a choice between two failures.
The DA promises efficiency: better services, cleaner tenders, and accountable governance. These are real improvements. But they will flow first to those who can pay. A DA-led JB Marks will have better roads in Baillie Park and more reliable electricity in Van der Hoff Park. It may extend some improvements to the townships. But it will not challenge the fundamental logic that allocates resources to wealth. Inequality will deepen, even as average service levels rise.
The ANC promises continuity: pro-poor rhetoric masking continued corruption and spatial stagnation. The irregular expenditure will keep accumulating. The tenderpreneurs will keep extracting. The sewage will keep flowing in the townships. But the language of liberation will persist, and the networks of patronage will remain intact.
Neither party will say what must be said: that genuine transformation requires redistributing resources from rich to poor. That the pipes in Baillie Park cannot be fixed while the pipes in Ikageng remain broken unless we accept that money is not infinite. That the privilege of the few must be sacrificed for the dignity of the many.
A different path
There is another way. The “Putting Shelter on Everyone’s Head” Policy (PSEHP), developed by independent analyst, Siyabonga Hadebe, offers a framework for genuine transformation.
Its elements are simple but radical:
- Capping property prices to stop speculation in the northern suburbs
- Punitive taxes on second and third properties, with revenue ring-fenced for township infrastructure
- Replacing freehold title with land use rights to prevent banks from seizing ancestral land
- Bringing municipal services back in-house, employing permanent staff at decent wages
- Redirecting at least 60% of infrastructure spending to historically disadvantaged areas until basic service parity is achieved.
This is not about making the poor feel included in an unjust system. It is about transforming the system itself.
What residents must demand
Whoever governs after 2026, residents of JB Marks must demand answers to uncomfortable questions:
- Why does infrastructure investment continue flowing to the northern suburbs while township networks decay?
- Why does the municipality spend R41-million monthly on external contractors instead of employing permanent staff?
- Why do sewage spills in Promosa persist for months while spills in Baillie Park generate immediate action?
- When will the 20,000-house backlog be addressed, and why has it taken thirty years to build nothing?
These questions will not be answered by voting alone. They will be answered by organised communities refusing to accept that some children play in sewage while others enjoy reliable services. They will be answered by workers demanding that their municipality rebuild its capacity instead of outsourcing their jobs. They will be answered by citizens who understand that the market will never deliver justice –because justice requires redistribution, and redistribution requires sacrifice.
The choice before JB Marks is not between parties. It is between accepting that some deserve more than others, and demanding that every resident – whatever their address – receives the dignity they are owed.
Thirty years of democracy have proven that the market will not fix apartheid’s geography. The question is whether we have the courage to try something else.
Suliman Rajah is a community activist based in JB Marks.
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