Central SA
Sakeliga pushes for national intervention in collapsed Ditsobotla─── KEKELETSO MOSEBETSI 10:18 Tue, 12 Aug 2025

Civil society lobby group Sakeliga has approached the courts to compel national government intervention in the dysfunctional Ditsobotla Municipality in North West.
Citing a collapse of basic services and governance, the group has given Pres. Cyril Ramaphosa until Friday (15/8) to act – or face legal consequences.
Sakeliga CEO Piet Le Roux has been vocal about what he sees as a constitutional failure by the national executive to intervene under Section 139(7) of the Constitution. This section provides that when a provincial government is unable or unwilling to adequately intervene in a failing municipality, the national government must step in.
“We will be seeking cost orders against the president and relevant ministers because they are constitutionally obligated to personally take charge under section 139(7) of the Constitution, and they are repeatedly failing at that obligation,” Le Roux told Newsroom Afrika.
“Many municipalities are approaching the state of collapse Ditsobotla is in, and it’s really crucial that the national executive and president personally take charge and turn these municipalities around. If we do not force them to, we face a cascading collapse across the countryside.”
The Lichtenburg-based municipality has become a poster child for municipal dysfunction, making headlines in recent years for political infighting, administrative collapse, and service delivery breakdowns.
“We are looking at water failures, we’re looking at electricity failures, we’re looking at multiple mayors disputing and even violently fighting,” he said. “Personal security guards, some of the people sent by the province to intervene being assaulted, and personal paperwork of the municipality blowing with wind around town. That municipality’s council has collapsed.”
Sakeliga’s court application comes amid similar calls for intervention from within government itself. North West MEC for cooperative governance, human settlements and traditional affairs (Cogta), Oageng Molapisi, has publicly acknowledged the province’s failure to restore stability in Ditsobotla and has urged the national executive to step in.
“Just last week, the MEC of Cogta was on record making a public plea, saying the national government has to bring everybody, send everything they have to intervene in terms of section 139(7),” said Le Roux. “So intergovernmental cooperation has broken down to the level that provincial government has to make a public plea to get the national executive to intervene.”
Despite such appeals, Molapisi has expressed skepticism about the impact of simply dissolving the council. He has argued that new elections would likely reproduce the same results, a view echoed by North West political analyst Professor Kedibone Phago.
Following the recent expulsion of ten ANC councillors from the Ditsobotla council, Phago remarked that the purge was unlikely to result in meaningful political or administrative change.
Le Roux warned that the stakes go beyond Ditsobotla.
“This is not just about one municipality. If national government does not step in where it has the constitutional duty to do so, we risk a domino effect of municipal collapses across the country,” he said.
OFM News/Kekeletso Mosebetsi cvs