Power, Water, Dignity for all Capetonians: A Call to Every Capetonian Who Keeps This City Alive

They say if you want to know whether a leader understands ordinary people, ask him the price of bread or milk. Today I want to ask something else:

Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, do you know that it can cost around R10 to boil a kettle of water in a backyards and a shacks on the Cape Flats? Do you care? And what are you doing about it?

My Bill and the Bills You Don’t See

A few days ago my wife handed me our municipal bill. I opened it with that deep sigh so many of us have perfected  the sigh of ordinary Capetonians who pay quietly, survive quietly, struggle quietly. This time I refused to be quiet. I did not look at it as a former MP. I looked at it as a husband and a father. As a 52-year-old Capetonian trying, like millions in this city, to survive an unbearable cost of living. We pulled out six months of bills. We compared line by line.  Its shocking.

Here is what we found in our own home:

• Our property rates went from about R2,780 to R3,040 a month in four months an 8 to 10% jump on an already high property rates base.
• Our effective water cost per kilolitre climbed from about R63 to R76 roughly a 21% increase  even though our usage stayed much the same.
• Water tariffs in the mid-range step increased by about 18.8%, and the higher step by about 24%.
• From July 2025, new fixed charges kicked in: our water fixed charge almost doubled to R247.70; a new sewer fixed charge of R172.32 appeared; the Home User wires and service charge on electricity rose to around R339.89 a month; and a new City-wide cleaning levy of R360 was added  every month, whether we produce one black bag or ten. I did not ask for and I don’t want cleaning levy and fixed water and sanitation charge.

All of this is now linked to property valuation bands, not only to what we use. So even if we shower less, switch off geysers, and cut back, the bill is loaded against us by design.

If this is what happens to a formal household with a legal connection, what is happening to the poor in backyards, shacks and informal settlements, who don’t even have their own meter? That is the real scandal.

One City. Two Worlds. Many Wounds

On paper, the City says it looks after the poor. It points proudly to the Lifeline electricity tariff of about R2.60 per unit, with some free units for qualifying households.

But most poor households are blocked:

• They live in shacks and backyard rooms with no individual meter.
• They buy electricity from a main house on Home User or Domestic tariffs.
• They pay effectively R3.37, R3.90 or R4.41 per unit, plus someone else’s fixed charges, with no protection and no free basic electricity.

Others, in informal settlements, have no legal connection at all. They face dangerous illegal wiring, paraffin and gas. They live one spark away from disaster. So we sit with a hard truth:

The DA-run City is “well-run” for a few, but not for all Capetonians.

The wealthy have security, solar, inverters and private options.

The formal middle class is squeezed through rates and fixed charges.

The working class is drowning in debt and prepaid slips.

Backyard and shack families live in fear of fire, darkness and eviction.

This is not “best-run” for us the many only for the rich and few. This is two-tier Cape Town.

This Is Not Just Unfair. It Is Structural Violence

Let me speak plainly. When electricity is unaffordable, people go back to paraffin, wood and illegal wires. Shacks burn. Children die. Families lose everything in twenty minutes.

When water becomes expensive, people ration washing and cleaning. Illness spreads. Dignity is lost.

When rates keep rising on inflated property valuations, families slide into arrears, red letters, and the fear of losing their homes.

When backyarders are denied their own prepaid meter, their own account, their own lifeline tariff, they remain invisible, exploitable, unprotected.

This is not just “bad policy”. This is violence through policy. A slow, polite, administrative violence that breaks homes, not bones  but kills hope all the same.

Our Struggle Is One: From Shacks, From Backyards to Suburbs

This fight is not only about the middle class. It is about:

• the backyard mother buying R50 electricity three times a week;
• the young person studying in a shack next to a dangerous spiderweb of live wires;
• the pensioner in a paid-off house who suddenly cannot carry rates and fixed charges;
• the tenant paying inflated “per box” electricity because there is no meter in their name;
• the homeowner who did everything “right” but is now treated like an ATM allowing daylight robbery.

We experience the pain differently.

But we share the same enemy: an opaque, extractive, anti-poor, anti-working class tariff system. We have already marched. We will continue to protest. We are not going away.

What Must We Do? Our Demands

We must move from quiet anger to clear demands. I suggest we rally around these:

1. Scrap unjust fixed charges.

End property-based fixed charges for water, sanitation and electricity. Go back to a fair system based on connection size and real use.

2. Free 200kWh of electricity per month for every household that needs it.

Not only for a narrow category on a register. Any poor or low-income household, including backyard and shack households with legal meters, must get a real lifeline.

3. Legal, safe electricity for backyard and informal families.

Roll out individual prepaid meters, safe wiring and proper infrastructure. Give every backyard and shack household its own account, Lifeline access, and protection from exploitation.

4. Review the property valuation and rates policy.

Stop using inflated valuations to pump up rates. Link increases to reality, to income, and to service levels  not to market fantasies.

5. Reduce electricity tariffs and align them with NERSA.

Bring Home User and Domestic tariffs down. Stop using households to cross-subsidise the City’s image and mega-projects.

6. End the City-wide cleaning levy and similar stealth charges.

Public cleaning is a core municipal function. It must come from normal rates, not from extra levies piled onto already stretched households.

7. Make every bill clear, honest and comparable.

Each bill must show last year vs this year, unit prices, fixed charges, and the tariff you are on  in plain language. No more hiding behind complexity. 

How Do We Build PEOPLES’ POWER?

We start small, then grow. Talk to your family. Audit your bill. Work out your cost per day, per kilolitre, per unit. If you are in a backyard, work out what you really pay against the official tariffs. Then send a written query. Mark it: “Paid under protest.” Force the City to respond. Build a paper trail.

Then talk to your street. Your WhatsApp group. Your church, mosque, stokvel, sports club. Share real numbers. Patterns will appear. Those patterns are political.

From there, we build a city-wide network  shack dwellers, backyarders, tenants, homeowners, pensioners, youth  standing together for Power, Water, Dignity for All.

We take this into hearings, into the media, into the courts, and into the 2026 local elections.

Any candidate who cannot answer where they stand on these demands does not deserve our vote.

A Personal Word

I have spent my life fighting for justice  in communities, in unions, in Parliament.  But today I speak as a man who opened his own bill with his wife beside him and felt what you feel: fear, anger, confusion, exhaustion, disrespect.

And then I thought of the backyard and shack families I have met; the mothers boiling water on paraffin, the teenagers charging phones at neighbours’ houses, the settlements rebuilding after yet another fire. If we do not fight this now, the City will price out the poor, hollow out the working class, and drown the middle class in debt.

This is not the Cape Town I fought for. This is not the Cape Town I love. This is not the Cape Town we must leave to our children.

We are not invisible. We are not weak. We are not divided.

We are the people who keep this city alive. And, as the old song says: “Get up, stand up; don’t give up the fight.”

Remember, we fought against apartheid injustices; we must do it again. 

*Faiez Jacobs is a former  Member of Parliament, founder of The Transcendence Group, Capetonian, Activist, and Servant of the People.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.