The Garden Route, considered one of the most scenic drives in the world, runs from Mossel Bay in the Western Cape through to the Tsitsikamma forests in the Eastern Cape. Its stunning natural beauty is increasingly undermined, for residents and tourists alike, by bad governance.
One of the jewels of the Garden Route is — or rather, was — Knysna. The town narrowly escaped being put under administration because of chronic sewage spills, water disruptions and worsening service crises.
Travelling across the Western Cape, you are hit by the stark fractures in local municipalities. One moment, you pass a pristine town where services appear to be working. Less than an hour later, the scene flips: rubbish piles up, there is obvious decay and taps are dry, leaving residents trapped in a slow-motion crisis.
As the 2026 local government elections loom, this jarring divide isn’t just a road trip quirk, it’s a glaring indictment of governance failures and coalition chaos. The question is whether a rectifying judgment will be passed by voters in November.
Top performers such as Saldanha Bay and Swartland lead with clean audits, strong financials and reliable services, earning them joint first place in national awards for best-run municipalities. On the southern coast, Swellendam and Hessequa follow closely, with solid infrastructure and high capital expenditure.
In Philippi on the Cape Flats, extortion gangs interrupt rubbish collection, drains are blocked and decay seems permanent. Beaufort West ranks as the province’s worst, scoring just 18/100 on financial stability.
The elections will be a test for the DA. It runs the Western Cape but holds an overall majority in only 10 of the province’s 30 municipalities. These include the only metro, Cape Town, while it governs others through coalitions or agreements.
Some of those coalitions, especially in George and Bitou, are fragile, while the ANC has a slender hold on Knysna. The DA’s grip appears threatened by the growing presence of the Patriotic Alliance (PA), emboldened by recent by-election gains.
The FM visited the Garden Route and found evidence of voter apathy along with services wear and tear after five years of political instability.
The centre of recent frustration is Knysna. Ironically, for a place surrounded by it, water is the core problem. The DA has eight seats, but the town is led by the ANC (seven) and several minority allies.
Since December, a peak holiday season for Knysna, fears of day zero have gripped the town. Water tankers have been a common sight, with the province declaring a disaster and the national government weighing in. The provincial government appealed to charity NGO Gift of the Givers, whose Southern Cape co-ordinator, Mario Ferreira, describes the water system as paralysed by delays.
“It took more than a month just to finalise a service-level agreement to use boreholes [on a private farm],” he says. By the time operations began in late January, infrastructure failures were mounting. Pumps feeding the main supply had broken. Pipelines between pumps and the dam had burst.
They promise you heaven on earth. But after the election, it’s quiet. Nothing happens
— Katrina de Wee
Ferreira says the core issue was infrastructure and response times. “The turnaround to fix things was almost nonexistent.” When Gift of the Givers arrived, the town’s main water source, Akkerkloof Dam, stood at 21%. By the end of February, levels had risen to about 30%, thanks to rain and water deliveries.
“What’s happening at the moment with the people in control, it’s not working,” says Ferreira. “It’s more focused on who they can blame, but nothing on action. There’s a lot of infighting between political parties.”
Jan van der Westhuizen of the Greater Knysna Business Chamber says service issues affect the image of the town. He tells the FM that many foreign tourists book holidays two years in advance and he worries that tour operators will discourage people from visiting. Earlier this year Knysna lost a popular water polo tournament to Cape Town.
“We cannot allow the politics to ruin the town further,” adds Van der Westhuizen. He says it’s not a water or waste problem, “it’s a management problem”, and he blames it on “political fatigue”.
“[People are] fed up with this and they want change. They say we can’t trust what the municipality is saying. There’s no communication. Because of the crisis, people are starting to stand together. The whole purpose of this is to fix Knysna. We see this as a town where things are going to improve again.”
Knysna relies heavily on tourism for jobs. According to a municipal outlook and economic review, recently released by the Western Cape government, employment in the area declined by 1.4% between 2023 and 2024, a fall in job numbers from 26,117 to 25,740.
While businesses worry about reputation, poorer communities face more immediate consequences.
In nearby Hornlee, home to about 12,000 people, water outages are frequent and often unannounced. Katrina de Wee, a pensioner, says residents sometimes wait late into the night for water trucks. Informal settlements in the area are expanding, increasing the demand on already strained services.
De Wee is sceptical that elections will bring change. “They promise you heaven on earth,” she says. “But after the election, it’s quiet. Nothing happens.” She says some infrastructure, including pipes, isn’t maintained properly. “It’s almost like your teeth — if you don’t brush them regularly, they will rot.”
Knysna’s problems are inseparable from its politics. ANC mayor Thando Matika, who has been in office for just over a year, acknowledges infrastructure backlogs and coalition challenges. “Our infrastructure is very old and has not been upgraded for quite some time,” he says.
Plans are under way to refurbish key pump stations and repair broken boreholes, but funding constraints remain severe. “We will need grants and assistance,” Matika says. “This cannot be fixed in one budget.” He also notes the difficulty of managing coalitions. “Some partners don’t know if they are part of the government or the opposition,” he says.
DA mayoral candidate Levael Davis, who was briefly mayor before being voted out, argues that constant leadership changes have paralysed decision-making. “People can’t make decisions. Some are scared. Political instability affects staff morale.”
He says instability undermines administrative performance and financial management. “Coalition governments are a threat to good governance,” says Davis. What would have made sense, he argues, was for the bigger parties to work together.
Knysna is not an isolated case. Analyst Wayne Sussman tells the FM that in the 2021 elections the DA received over 50% of the vote in Cape Town, Drakenstein (Paarl), Stellenbosch, Swartland (Malmesbury), Mossel Bay, Overstrand (Hermanus), Hessequa, Berg River (Piketberg) and Swellendam. But after the next elections, he says, “it is very likely that many of these councils will be hung”.
The worry for the DA and the ANC in the Western Cape, he says, will be the PA. Gayton McKenzie’s party has described itself as the fastest-growing in the country. Recent results have backed this up. “The DA lost municipal wards in Drakenstein, Mossel Bay, Swellendam and Swartland, to name a few. The PA is likely to emerge as kingmaker in several municipalities,” says Sussman.
He says there has been a steady decrease in voter turnout in national and local elections. “The paradox is that more South Africans are becoming sceptical of coalitions. They see instability and often experience chaos, but due to the fragmentation of our politics, there will be more coalitions after the next election.”
What’s happening at the moment with the people in control, it’s not working
— Mario Ferreira
Anton Bredell, the province’s MEC for local government, shares these concerns. He says the country doesn’t have coalition politics, “we’ve got kingmaking politics”. He says this chokes decision-making and the “kingmaker will hold you to ransom”. Smaller parties can exert disproportionate influence, leading to stalled decision-making and governance gridlock.
“My worst nightmare will be that we sit with 10 Knysnas,” he tells the FM.
Across the Garden Route, frustration extends beyond infrastructure failures.
Sedgefield Ratepayers Association chair Kevin Barnes doubts there is much hope. “The last elections brought about changes that have damaged the municipality considerably,” he tells the FM. “The problem has been lack of service delivery, a lot of corruption, a lot of inefficiency. It’s brought about by a municipality that is unable to make decisions. Sedgefield has enough water, but we do not have enough pumping capacity or pipes, so it’s a management problem.”
He says the problems point back to the management of the Knysna municipality, which Sedgefield, an independent municipality before 1996, joined in local government restructuring.
David Zeller, of the Garden Route Ratepayers Association, says public participation has become largely symbolic. “Processes exist on paper, but decisions are effectively predetermined,” he says. Communities that challenge municipalities often face hostility or legal pushbacks, funded by public money.
Tony Blignaut, of the Plettenberg Bay Ratepayers & Residents Association, cites poor communication, weak planning and rising costs. In his view, the problem is systemic rather than party political. “It doesn’t matter which party is in control,” he says. “Our concern is the unsuitability of the councillors to oversee the running of municipalities with budgets of more than R1bn and their inability to properly evaluate and appoint suitable senior management. That becomes the perfect storm.”
In his state of the province address, Western Cape premier Alan Winde highlighted three municipalities that were making improvements.
Hessequa won the bid for a solar PV and battery storage project worth R173m over three financial years. This will allow Riversdale to be independent of Eskom, the first town in South Africa to achieve this.
Breede Valley (Ashton) built three new reservoirs in Worcester that will support water resilience for many years.
Cape Town is spending more money than ever before on infrastructure, installing major pipelines and building roadways, and is about to put out tenders for water reuse and desalination plants.
However, the fragmentation of local politics suggests such heartening improvements will seldom be replicated, unless voters return in numbers to the larger parties.
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