Elections 2026: N1 town’s decade of decay

If there were three things Elaine Wessels could fix in her suburb in Beaufort West, it would be the gravel roads, streetlighting and the time it takes the municipality to respond to electricity and water complaints.

Wessels has lived for the past 35 years in Rustdene in the house of her late mother. She lives with her five adult children, all of whom are unemployed. She works as a cleaner in a community work programme, a state initiative for otherwise unemployed residents. She turns 60 next year.

Van Niekerk Street, where she stays, and the surrounding streets have no streetlights. There is one distant high mast light, but Wessels said their area is dark at night.

Her toilet is in her yard. She said it is frequently blocked because of the old pipes.

“I have reported it, many times, but no one is sent out to check or fix it. And I do not have the money to keep travelling to the municipality office to go and report,” she said.

A few houses away, we met Riaan Botes, trying to fix a leaking toilet pipe in his flooded yard. He is currently in dispute with the municipality over an R11,000 water bill caused by a leak, which he said is not his responsibility. He is unemployed. His daughter is paying the municipality monthly instalments of R233.

We met Wessels and Botes through community activist, Linda Minnies, who took us around Beaufort West. In Long Street, she showed us an overflowing drain that was spilling sewer water into the yard of a creche.

The Beaufort West Local Municipality has been one of the most politically unstable municipalities in the country. After the 2016 elections, the municipality was run by a DA-led coalition, but was replaced mid-term by an ANC and Karoo Democratic Force (KDF) coalition. The 2021 elections led to an ANC, PA and KDF coalition. The town went through four PA mayors in three years, including Ashley Sauls (who wanted to rename the town “Dubai West”) and Ebenezer Botha, who resigned after domestic violence allegations.

The Central Karoo District Municipality, which encompasses several local municipalities, including Beaufort West, is responsible for disaster management, environmental health, district roads and regional tourism, among other things. It has had similar levels of instability and was run by the PA’s Gayton McKenzie between April 2022 and May 2023.

The June 2024 by-elections gave the DA an outright majority in the local municipality. But the instability continued. DA mayor Sias Reynolds resigned nine months later. The town went four months without a mayor until the ANC’s Castro de Bruin was elected with the help of a now-expelled DA councillor. De Bruin resigned ahead of a no-confidence motion, and the DA’s Gina Duimpies has been mayor since August 2025.

In 2023, two of the municipality’s water supply systems — Murraysburg and Nelspoort — were among eight in the Western Cape found to be in critical condition. In February this year, the municipality was losing 77% of its water .