I am going to state the obvious. Nobody, inside or outside of the Ndlambe municipality, understands the new services tariff sheet.

To make this point Ratepayers Revolt has been offering a generous reward to anybody who can show internal consistency in the calculations within the tariff sheet. The reward remains unclaimed.

One of the easiest ways to understand the rates and service tariffs is to consider use cases. The idea is to go through representative examples, showing exactly how the costs in the previous financial year are calculated, how the costs in the current financial year are calculated, and the percentage year-on-year increase.

This is very straightforward. In fact, the idea is so obvious that it was codified in law in the MFMA 2003 regulation. Your municipality is acquired by law to produce these examples as Table SA14. The Ndlambe mayor does not make it easy to find, but you can find the table after much scrolling in https://ndlambe.gov.za/web/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/EC105-A-SCHEDULE-2024-2025-1.pdf

For your convenience, I will paste the 3 use cases from the document in the tables below.

Case 1: Middle Income Household

Case 2: Affordable Range Household

Case 3: Indigent Household

Case 1. Use as basis property value of R700 000, 1000 kWh electricity and 30kl water

Case 2. Use as basis property value of R500 000 and R700 000, 500 kWh electricity and 25kl water

Case 3. Use as basis property value of R 300 000, 350kWh electricity and 20kl water (50 kWh electricity and 6 kl water free)

A quick examination of the tables shows a complete lack of respect for the integrity of the budget process and a reckless regard for the law. The tables are NOT updated for the new tariffs and have completely fallacious numbers. For example, for 2024/25 and Case 1 a 69.9% reduction in the total bill of the ratepayer relative to the preceding year is claimed, a fulsome lie.

Ratepayers urgently need to asking questions about the quality of municipal governance, the quality of the budget process, and the quality of the budget oversight process.