South Africans vote in local government elections on 5 November 2026, and the decisions that will shape their daily lives most are the ones almost nobody campaigns on. Voters will hear councillor hopefuls promise to fix potholes, end water outages and power cuts, and improve refuse collection. Those promises matter. But they address only the visible surface of what local government does.
The deeper question, the one that determines where people can live, work and move, and who gets access to jobs and services, is town planning. It is the most under-discussed, under-resourced and consequential function of South African municipalities, and the public has real power to change how it is exercised.
That is the argument of a scholar who has spent a career studying how municipalities plan, or fail to plan, for the cities their residents actually live in. Writing in The Conversation, in a piece headlined “Protest later or push for better planning now? 7 actions South African voters can take before local elections” (https://theconversation.com/protest-later-or-push-for-better-planning-now-7-actions-south-african-voters-can-take-before-local-elections-291783), the author, who leads research as South Africa’s SARChI Chair for Inclusive Cities and wrote the book Spatial Planning in Service Delivery: Towards Distributive Justice in South Africa, sets out seven areas where public pressure before the election is most likely to change how decisions get made. The research shows that in many municipalities, citizens and politicians argue over traffic, housing shortages, informal settlements and poor services, while paying too little attention to the planning that either causes these problems or could prevent them.
The first lever is the Spatial Development Framework. Every municipality should have one, showing where development should take place and how roads, water and other services will support it. Residents can demand to see it and hold councillors to it, which helps stop developments being approved simply because land is cheap or developers apply pressure, even where services have not been planned or funded. This lever is badly underused. Parliament heard in 2024 that only 51% of municipalities complied with their own Spatial Development Framework. Wherever you live, the advice is to ask your councillor for the document, check when it was last reviewed, and find out which decisions were made in line with it.
A second question concerns capacity rather than corruption. Residents are right to be suspicious when a planning decision favours the wrong person, and corruption must be investigated. But in smaller and rural municipalities the more common and more fixable problem is an empty desk: there is simply no one qualified to do the job. Knowing which problem you face changes what you demand. An empty desk needs a budget line and a hiring freeze lifted, so residents should ask how many qualified planners their municipality employs.
Third is the Municipal Planning Tribunal. South Africa’s Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act moved rezoning decisions from provincial government down to municipal tribunals, a democratic gain in principle because decisions now sit closer to the people they affect. Residents can find out exactly who approved the development next door and appeal against it. Left unwatched, that power invites trouble. Cape Town’s tribunal has recently faced allegations that it changed its planning bylaw so members could take a short break after their 10 year terms ended and then return, potentially eroding the tribunal’s independence. The public should ask who sits on their tribunal, how members are appointed, and how decisions are published and appealed.
Housing is the fourth front, and the stakes are enormous. South Africa is short of between 2.1 million and 2.6 million homes, and more than two million households live in over 4,000 informal settlements. In several major cities, municipal planners now acknowledge that most people who need housing are living in informal settlements rather than waiting for formal houses elsewhere. Planning around that reality means spending more on water, toilets, electricity and roads where people already live, rather than building new housing on undeveloped land far from jobs and public transport. A revealing question for any council: what percentage of the housing budget goes to upgrading existing informal settlements, and what percentage to new developments? The answer shows where the council’s priorities lie.
Fifth, land use and transport planning need to talk to each other. South Africa’s transport plans promise bus routes and development close to public transport, but municipal transport and land departments often work separately. When thousands of homes are approved without better transport, poorer residents pay through longer, more expensive journeys. Residents can ask whether the two plans are linked and whether the departments make decisions together.
The sixth point is about who the city is actually designed for. Spatial planning was historically built around a male commuter travelling in a straight line to a single workplace. That is not how most women, caregivers or informal traders move; their trips are multi-stop, off-peak and safety-conscious. Research shows that street lighting, clear lines of sight, safe paths and the placement of facilities such as toilet blocks and taxi ranks are central to public safety. Every new development should be asked whether it was designed around how women and informal traders actually move, or only around vehicle traffic counts.
Finally, inclusive planning is not a wish list. Municipalities adopt Integrated Development Plans setting out the budget for all upgrades and service delivery. When a plan says upgrading informal settlements is a priority, that is a commitment citizens can quote back, line item by line item, at the next budget meeting.
The broader message is one of shared responsibility. Municipalities must employ qualified planners, fund the work properly, make departments plan together and publish clear reasons for development decisions. Councillors must treat town planning as a major public responsibility, because it determines where people live, how they travel and who has access to jobs and services. And residents should ask not only when a pothole will be repaired, but why a development was approved, who approved it, which plan guided the decision and how it will be carried out.