Soup kitchens, long cold, dry and dark winters

Why your local council can’t just make water and electricity free — and what communities can do instead

South Africa’s Constitution says everyone has the right to enough water. It says local government must provide basic services fairly. Those are not empty words. They are binding promises.

But try telling that to a family in an informal settlement whose prepaid electricity meter cuts out in the middle of winter. Or to a mother watching her children do homework by candlelight because she cannot afford the tariff increase. Or to the volunteers at a soup kitchen who have to turn people away because there is no water to cook with and no power to keep food from spoiling.

The promise sounds good on paper. In practice, it keeps slipping away.

 The wealthy are leaving the grid

Walk through any affluent suburb these days. Solar panels cover the roofs. Borehole pumps run quietly in well-kept gardens. The municipal electricity meter barely spins.

Now travel a few kilometres to the nearest township. Families share a single tap. Prepaid meters cut power without warning. Pit latrines overflow. The difference could not be starker.

When wealthy households disconnect from municipal services, they also disconnect from the revenue that keeps those services running. The result is a death spiral. Fewer paying customers mean higher tariffs for everyone else. Higher tariffs mean more people cannot pay. More defaults mean worse services. Worse services mean even more wealthy households invest in solar and boreholes and leave the grid behind.

The poor are trapped. They cannot afford solar panels. They cannot drill boreholes. They are stuck paying more for less while the suburbs go private. Winter comes, and they sit in the dark and the cold. The taps run dry. The soup kitchens struggle to keep their doors open.

The Constitutional Court noticed this. In a case called Bromwell Street at the end of 2024, the Court told the City of Cape Town that its policies “mirror and perpetuate apartheid-era injustices.” But noticing the problem is not the same as fixing it.

What the law actually says

The main law that governs how municipalities charge for services is the Municipal Systems Act of 2000. Section 74 of that Act sets out the rules for setting tariffs.

The rules say that tariffs must reflect what it actually costs to provide the service. No subsidising by default. Payment must be based on how much you use. No flat rates for everyone. Poor households must have access to basic services – but this is a limited exception. And tariffs must keep the service financially sustainable. No running at a loss.

The law does allow municipalities to help the poor. They can charge poor households only the operating and maintenance costs, not the profit or capital costs. They can create “lifeline tariffs” for small amounts of water or electricity.

But the default is clear: cost-reflective, use-based tariffs. A council cannot just declare all water free. It cannot charge a flat rate regardless of how much you consume. As the City of Tshwane put it plainly in 2022, a flat rate is not allowed by the law and would not be cost-effective.

So a municipal council cannot simply vote to provide services as a basic right. It must calculate consumption, set tariffs to recover costs, and separate poor from non-poor households. The law does not forbid helping the poor. But it makes help a targeted subsidy, not a universal right.

 The courts have pushed back – a little

South Africa’s courts have stepped in when municipalities went too far.

In a case called Joseph v City of Johannesburg, the Constitutional Court said a municipality cannot cut off a tenant’s electricity just because the property owner asked for it. The municipality must give notice and a chance to be heard before disconnecting a basic service.

In a case called Mazibuko v City of Johannesburg, the Court looked at the free basic water policy. It did not order 50 litres per person per day, as a lower court had done. But it said the state’s duty to provide water is real, and courts can check whether policies are reasonable.

And in the Bromwell Street case, the Court criticised Cape Town for moving evicted families to distant informal settlements. The Court ordered that alternative accommodation must be as close as possible to where people originally lived.

These cases show that courts will stop the worst abuses. But they have not overturned the basic rules about tariffs. They have added fairness and dignity as requirements – but they have not said municipalities must provide free services or can ignore cost-recovery.

So the soup kitchens keep running out of water. The dark winters keep coming. The taps stay dry.

 A different path: communities helping themselves

If the municipality cannot or will not provide services as rights, what can communities do?

The wealthy have already answered this question. They installed solar panels on their own homes. They drilled boreholes in their own gardens. They disconnected from the municipal grid. The law did not stop them. It barely slowed them down.

Can poor communities do the same thing?

The short answer is yes. The law does not forbid it. But the law does not pay for it either.

Here is what communities can legally do right now, without waiting for the municipality or the national government.

Each household can install its own off-grid solar system. The only legal requirement is a Certificate of Compliance from a registered electrician. That certificate confirms that the electrical installation is safe. It is already required for any electrical work in any home, whether grid-connected or not.

No registration with Eskom. No application to Nersa. No licence. No permission from the municipality. No fee. No bureaucracy.

The wealthy have done this. The law did not stand in their way.

Households can pool their money to buy panels in bulk. A group of neighbours can negotiate a better price and hire the same electrician to do all the installations. This is not regulated. It is just collective purchasing. The law has nothing to say about it.

Communities can register a cooperative. The Cooperative Act makes this easy. The cooperative can own the tools, hire the technicians, and provide maintenance services to member households. Each household still owns its own panels. No electricity flows between homes. No regulation applies. The communal technicians are just workers hired by the community to maintain privately owned equipment. The law has no problem with that.

Communities can train their own technicians. A registered electrician must sign off on the initial installation. But after that, routine maintenance can be done by anyone the community trusts. There is no law that says only certain people can clean solar panels or check battery connections.

Communities can approach donor organisations, faith-based groups, or progressive businesses for funding. The law does not forbid this. Municipal permission is not required.

What the law does NOT require

It is important to be clear about what the law does not require for off-grid household solar.

No registration with Eskom. For systems that are completely off-grid – meaning they are not connected to the municipal electricity network at all – Eskom has no say. The registration requirements that get discussed in the news apply only to systems that are connected to the grid.

No licence from Nersa. The Electricity Regulation Act exempts all private power systems below 100 kW from licensing requirements. A typical household solar system is 3 kW to 5 kW. Well below the threshold. No licence needed.

No permission from the municipality. The municipality regulates its own grid. If you are not connected to its grid, you do not need its permission.

No ongoing fees. Once the system is installed and certified, there are no monthly charges. No tariffs. No disconnections for non-payment.

No complex paperwork. A Certificate of Compliance from a registered electrician. That is it.

The wealthy have known this for years. That is why they installed solar. The law was never the barrier.

 The real barrier: capital, not law

So if the law does not stop communities from installing solar on every home, why is it not happening everywhere?

The answer is money. Not law.

A basic solar system for a household – enough to run lights, charge phones, power a small fridge, and keep the television on – costs between R15,000 and R30,000. For an informal settlement of 1,000 homes, that is R15 million to R30 million. Where does that money come from?

The wealthy have it. Poor communities do not.

Banks will not lend to unemployed households. The municipality has no money to give away for free. The national government’s free basic electricity policy provides a small monthly allowance of 50 kWh, but it does not provide solar panels. The wealthy accessed their own capital. The poor cannot.

The law does not discriminate on paper. But in practice, a legal framework that requires no permission but also provides no funding leaves poor communities exactly where they started: in the dark.

Where the law fights the Constitution

The fact that the law does not forbid community solar does not mean the law is fair. Several deep contradictions remain.

First, the wealthy can install solar because they have capital. The poor cannot because they lack it. The law provides no remedy for this inequality. The Constitution promises equality. But it does not write cheques.

Second, the Municipal Systems Act requires municipalities to recover costs. When the wealthy leave the grid, the poor are left behind with higher tariffs. The law that demands cost-recovery actively makes poverty worse. No court has struck this down.

Third, the wealthy benefit from tax incentives for solar installations. The poor get nothing. The state is actively subsidising wealthy exit while offering poor communities no help at all. This looks like unfair discrimination under Section 9 of the Constitution. No court has ruled on this yet.

Fourth, the Constitution guarantees the right of access to sufficient water and energy services. But it does not require the state to provide those services for free. This ambiguity allows the current system – where poor households pay for basic services while wealthy households opt out – to continue without constitutional challenge.

The contradiction could not be clearer. The law does not forbid communities from helping themselves. But it does nothing to help them. The wealthy can afford to go it alone. The poor cannot. That is not a legal problem. It is a political and economic one.

 The hidden hand of the World Bank

Where does the municipality’s inability to help come from? Part of the answer lies in national debt.

Over the past few years, National Treasury has borrowed large sums from the World Bank and other international lenders. In June 2025, a 1.5 billion US dollar World Bank loan was approved. In May 2026, a 150 million US dollar loan from the OPEC Fund was signed.

These loans do not say in writing that municipalities must charge market rates. But the overall deal that Treasury signed up to includes targets for debt, deficits, and inflation. Those targets trickle down to local government. Less money is transferred from national to local level. Municipalities are under pressure to collect as much revenue as possible from services.

South Africa now spends over 420 billion rand every year just to pay interest on its debts. That is more than it spends on social development, health, or basic education. Every rand that goes to foreign lenders is a rand that does not go to municipalities to subsidise services for the poor.

A council that wants to provide services as rights rather than commodities is not legally stopped. But it is financially strangled. It could vote for a radical policy. But without extra money from national government, the council would go bankrupt. And when a municipality goes bankrupt, the province steps in and takes over. That is Section 139 of the Constitution.

 Provinces are supposed to help – but they don’t

When a municipality fails, the province must step in. Section 139 of the Constitution says so. It is not optional.

But research from the Dullah Omar Institute shows that provinces almost never act. Courts have had to force provincial governments to intervene in Emalahleni, Makana, Emfuleni, Matjhabeng, and Ngwathe – all places where municipalities collapsed while the province did nothing.

The system wants municipalities to act like businesses. But when they fail – because providing services to poor, faraway townships at cost-recovery prices is impossible – the safety net is not relief. It is a court order that usually imposes even tougher financial rules.

 So what can a council actually do?

A council that wants to help the poor without waiting for national government can do some things.

It can adopt lifeline tariffs for poor households. It can subsidise basic services from its own revenue if it has any. It can refuse to disconnect people without giving them a fair hearing. It can take the province to court for failing to intervene when services collapse.

It can also help communities help themselves. A council could use its bulk purchasing power to buy solar panels at lower prices and make them available to poor households at cost. It could provide training for community technicians. It could waive any local fees or red tape that might discourage off-grid installations.

But a council cannot, on its own, abolish use-based tariffs. It cannot ignore cost-recovery. It cannot run deficits for long without being taken over. It cannot give away free solar panels to every poor household without money from somewhere.

The Municipal Systems Act does not force a council to charge market rates. It requires cost-reflective tariffs, but it also requires equitable access and help for the poor. There is room to move. But without extra money from national government, that room is very small.

What communities can do right now

Waiting for the municipality or the national government is not working. The wealthy did not wait. They acted.

Here is what communities can do today, legally, without permission from anyone:

Start small. A few households pool their money and buy panels together. Install on one street. Prove it works.

Find partners. Donor organisations, faith-based groups, progressive businesses, crowdfunding platforms. The money exists somewhere. It is not in the municipal budget.

Train local technicians. A registered electrician must sign off on the installation. But routine maintenance can be done by anyone the community trusts. Teach young people in the community how to clean panels, check batteries, and troubleshoot basic problems.

Register a cooperative. The Cooperative Act makes this simple. A cooperative can own tools, negotiate bulk purchases, and hire technicians. It gives the community a legal identity without needing municipal permission.

Stay off-grid. Do not connect to the municipal grid. Do not sell power to neighbours. Each home powers itself. The law has nothing to regulate. No registration. No licence. No fees.

The wealthy have already shown that the legal path exists. They walked it. The question is whether poor communities can walk the same path without the same money. That is not a legal question. It is a question of organisation, solidarity, and collective action.

 The bottom line

No law bars working-class communities from installing independent solar power on every home, hiring their own communal technicians, and disconnecting from the municipal grid entirely. For off-grid systems, the only legal requirement is a Certificate of Compliance from a registered electrician. That is it.

The wealthy have already done this. The law did not stop them.

The reason poor communities have not done the same thing is not the law. It is money. Solar panels cost money. Batteries cost money. Installation costs money. The wealthy have that money. Poor communities do not.

The law is not the enemy here. The law is silent. It permits. It does not provide. And in its silence, it allows a system where wealthy households can escape the grid while poor households are left behind to pay the rising costs.

The Constitution promises dignity. The law permits community power. But neither one pays for the solar panels. That part is up to the people – and the money they can raise, the organisation they can build, and the solidarity they can create.

The soup kitchens will keep struggling. The winters will stay long, cold, dry and dark. Unless communities decide that waiting for the municipality is not working, and that helping themselves – legally, collectively, and against the odds – is the only way forward.

Sources: Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996; Local Government: Municipal Systems Act 32 of 2000; Electricity Regulation Act; Cooperative Act; Eskom SSEG registration framework; Constitutional Court judgments: Joseph v City of Johannesburg, Mazibuko v City of Johannesburg, Bromwell Street v City of Cape Town (2024); Dullah Omar Institute research, 2025; National Treasury loan announcements, 2025-2026