POLITICALLY AWEH: Six parties share how they’ll tackle the cost of living

Joining Politically Aweh were Eddie Andrews (DA), Cameron Dugmore (ANC), Dereleen James (ActionSA), Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng (EFF), Dr Corné Mulder (FF+) and Songezo Zibi of Rise Mzansi, which is contesting this election alongside Good. MK did not send a representative – they were probably looking for a new secretary-general.How do we keep the bills down?Host KG Mokgadi started by asking a simple question: What would your party do to keep electricity costs and other municipal charges down? For context, municipal customers have been paying an average 9.01% more for electricity since 1 July, after the National Energy Regulator of SA approved Eskom’s latest increase. Mofokeng, the EFF’s Johannesburg mayoral candidate, wants the City to take direct charge of electricity supply, arguing that Joburg is losing money to the corporatised entities running its services. She’d also renegotiate payment plans for residents crushed under historical debt, and go after losses from illegal connections, theft and ageing infrastructure. That’s no small job: City Power puts its electricity losses at about 27%.James, ActionSA’s Cape Town mayoral candidate, promised to freeze tariffs for a year to work out why prices keep going up. “People’s salaries haven’t gone up, but everything has been adjusted,” she said. But first, James said, comes safety. “You cannot look at economic freedom, development, access, making life affordable if there’s no safety in your communities.”Zibi said municipalities were charging “fewer and fewer people who are able to pay more and more”, while residents already subsidise the state by paying for private security, boreholes and solar panels. Fix the billing and the administration, he argued, before reaching deeper into ratepayers’ pockets.Dugmore partly blamed rising costs on US President Donald Trump’s war with Iran. Fuel is the clearest example: wholesale diesel jumped from about R17.59 a litre in January to R30.30 in May. On rates, he said the high court had found Cape Town’s charges unaffordable and ordered the City to pay back the money. But that’s not quite what happened.In April, the Western Cape Division of the High Court declared the City’s fixed charges for water, sanitation and cleaning unlawful because they were tied to property values without following the rules for setting rates. The ruling applied from 30 June and didn’t order refunds, which is why Good, Rise’s election partner, has been seeking legal advice on forcing them. Close, but no refund.Andrews said nobody living on a social grant should have to worry about paying for electricity. His answer is competition: buying power from independent producers more cheaply than from Eskom, and passing the savings on to the average consumer. He also wants the private sector investing in water security. This is an example of why the choice is tricky for many voters. In 2024, the EFF’s manifesto promised to terminate all existing contracts with independent power producers and halt new ones.Yet buying from private producers is exactly how the DA says it will bring your bill down, and Cape Town is now shopping for 500MW from energy traders at below-Eskom rates. Then again, the DA’s hands-off approach to property is what Zibi called “rampant capitalism” in our housing episode. So the free market might be your friend on the electricity bill and your enemy on the rent. Nobody said this vote would be easy.Getting to work without going brokeMulder said transportation and traffic was a serious issue – personally, he spent two hours on the road into town every morning and two hours getting home. “In general, it’s a problem. But in Cape Town, it’s a crisis,” he said, adding that he couldn’t understand how “a certain blue party” could call the city a success without solving that. He has a point: Cape Town was ranked the world’s sixth most congested city in 2025, with drivers losing 96 hours per year to traffic.Dugmore said Metrorail’s recovery meant monthly ticket holders can travel from the suburbs into town for about R9 a trip, and that he’d felt safe on recent train rides. He called the City’s MyCiTi hikes “excessive” and wants one ticket that works across taxis, buses and trains.Working-class Capetonians, he said, spent 40% of their income on transport. In the first instalment of this series, Andrews gave us the same figure. Look at that: the ANC and DA agree on something.Andrews wants the City to take over running rail from the national government, something the DA-run Western Cape government has long lobbied for. If the City could “sweat the asset” with commercial developments at stations like Nyanga Junction and Mitchells Plain, he said, monthly ticket prices could come down over time.Zibi wants publicly owned transport in every city, with unemployed residents able to swipe their UIF card and ride the bus to look for work “at least three to four times a week”. Dugmore also backed a transport subsidy for unemployed young people and the elderly.Mofokeng focused on what a municipality can actually control: maintaining roads (including gravel roads that lead to schools and clinics), better lighting and more surveillance. Fuel prices were set nationally, she said, so the City couldn’t make it cheaper to run a taxi, but it could lobby on behalf of what she called “the only black-owned industry in this country”.Ready for the heat?Finally, we asked how each party would prepare its cities for a warming climate, especially since climate change is driving up the price of food, as well as fuelling extreme weather, which is hurting communities and damaging city infrastructure.James offered a few solutions: plant trees, green the whole city, and educate communities about what goes into sewer lines and the ocean.Mofokeng also wanted more trees, with every new residential development carrying a greening project, and climate adaptation built into all municipal planning. Andrews pointed to the City’s spatial development framework, saying planners were nudging developers towards greener buildings to bring temperatures down in the CBD. Mulder backed renewables and desalination, and Dugmore wanted more solar and wind, plus incentives for lift clubs and public transport.Zibi said cities fell behind on infrastructure because they kept diverting money to repair flood damage two or three times a year, and that no budget, national, provincial or municipal, was legally required to account for the cost of climate change. When we asked parties how they’d cut emissions, not one said “coal” or “fossil fuels”, and nobody mentioned the Just Energy Transition, the government’s plan for moving coal workers and communities into new industries.The ANC came closest with talk of a “less carbon intensive” future, though earlier in the same interview it argued that South Africa should buy more oil. It left us wondering whether our politicians are willing to name the real culprit: burning fossil fuels causes the overwhelming share of the pollution heating the planet.Cities may not run power stations, but they do buy electricity, set building rules and run transport, so they have more say than their answers suggested.So, where does that leave your wallet?Municipalities don’t set Eskom’s bulk tariff or the petrol price, as Mofokeng pointed out. What councils do control is how much they mark up your electricity, whether your bill is correct, and whether a bus or train can get you to work without swallowing a third of your pay. On that, the parties overlapped more than you’d expect. ActionSA, the ANC and Rise all want cheaper or free rides for people looking for work. The DA and FF+ both want councils to stop treating electricity as a cash cow.The major split is over who should run things: the EFF wants the City to take its services back, while the DA wants the private sector to help carry the load. Which of them you trust with your municipal account is up to you. Choose wisely: your bank account is watching. DMFor more from Politically Aweh, subscribe on YouTube, sign up for the newsletter, visit the website or follow them on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or X.