R84,1bn budget for CoCT for 2025/26 year

Executive Mayor of Cape Town, Geordin Hill-Lewis, tabled the City of Cape Town budget for the 2025/26 financial year, during a City council meeting on Thursday. The theme of Hill-Lewis’ administration has been about ‘Hope’. And for his fourth – and second last – Budget of this administration, the sub theme of the budget was named “Invested in Hope” Budget.

COURTESY: City of Cape Town

Hill-Lewis reiterated that each of the budgets in this term has seen new capital expenditure records.

‘’This budget contains Cape Town’s planned infrastructure investment over three years – at R39,7bn –more than the three Gauteng metros combined, and will create over 130 000 construction-related jobs. Crucially, a full 75% of this investment directly benefits lower income households. Our record-setting investment in Cape Town’s water and sanitation infrastructure gets another R5bn boost this year – more than double the R2.3bn we spent on water and sanitation in our first budget in 2022.’’

‘’Over the next three years R16,6 billion is allocated to water and sanitation. Just this portion of our capital budget is more than the entire capital budgets of Tshwane and Ekurhuleni combined. In public transport, over the three-year MTREF we’re spending around R4,5bn on our MyCiti expansion. This is the biggest project of its kind in South Africa which, once completed, is going to improve the lives of so many people along this route.

‘’We also march ahead on our mission to a decentralised energy future that is less Eskom reliant, with R5bn of investment over the medium-term framework in our city’s electricity grid,’’ said Hill-Lewis.

The Cape Town Mayor says the biggest chunk of the budget will be allocated to the safety and security directorate. The Cape Town mayor says the metro will deploy over 500 new officers across every community in Cape Town.

‘’This means that every ward in the city will now have a permanent deployment of officers for the first time. We are going to post officers in neighbourhoods where they will be stationed permanently, and where they will get to know that community well. They will get to know the challenges of the neighbourhood, they will get to know the problem buildings in the area, and they will get to know the residents themselves,’’ said Geordin Hill-Lewis, Cape Town Mayor.

‘’This kind of personal policing, where relationships and trust are built with specific officers, can only lead to more positive outcomes, and I look forward to seeing its impact once deployed. These new officers are over and above the 400 new officers we’ve added to the ranks of law enforcement and metro police since the start of this term.

‘’As they say, but wait…there’s more. You will remember three years ago we funded a first small unit dedicated to doing armed escort duties. Since then, attacks on frontline service staff and on our construction sites have skyrocketed as extortion mafia have only grown bolder and more brazen.’’

‘’We are sadly spending hundreds of millions of rands each year in armed security with private security companies. This is money that should be spent on basic services, or more infrastructure, but instead it must be spent on simply guarding waste collection trucks, or sewer response teams, as they try to deliver basic services in communities without harassment and attack.

''Time and time again we hear the same feedback from our teams – when there are blue lights there, there are no problems, no attacks. So I am also pleased to announce that in this budget we are now insourcing some of these security costs, and creating a much larger dedicated escort unit of 220 new officers. We hope this will put a stop to attacks on our frontline service staff so that we can better service the public, especially in informal settlements.''

‘’With today’s two announcements of over 700 new officers, plus the 400 we have already funded and deployed since the start of this term in office – this means we have funded over 1100 new officers since the start of this term.’’

‘’This is by far the biggest investment ever in making Cape Town safer. Our total safety and security budget is now a massive R6,7bn for the coming year. This really demonstrates our commitment to help SAPS fight crime and to do all we can to make Cape Town safer. Already with our major LEAP deployments to our metro’s most violent crime-impacted suburbs, we are seeing major successes in taking guns and drugs off the streets. With our special CBD deployment, we saw big increases in policing action to combat crime, and that has inspired us to make this investment in dedicated officers for every single ward.’’

‘’We are determined to make every single rand of our safety budget work as hard as it can to remove guns and drugs from our communities, and to arrest the perpetrators of crimes. And when we do finally get the devolved policing powers we have been asking for, our well-trained officers will be in a position to investigate and build solid case dockets that will see these perpetrators taken off the streets for long periods at a time,’’ he added.

Cape Town’s Invested in Hope Budget 2025/26 is about building a better future for all Capetonians!

🇿🇦 R39.7 billion infrastructure investment

🚔👮‍♂️ 700+ new officers!

💡 Lower electricity increases vs Eskom's 11.32% increase for the rest of SA. pic.twitter.com/9jw3SUl4kD

— Geordin Hill-Lewis (@geordinhl) March 27, 2025

Hill-Lewis says his administration will continue to advocate for the devolution of policing powers. In terms of electricity, and Hill-Lewis says it will increase purchasing of electricity to city customers by 2%. This as NERSA approved a 12,74% increase for Eskom and an 11,32% Eskom increase to municipalities

‘’This has been made possible by discontinuing the contribution to services other than electricity, embedded in the cost of each electricity unit. For the past three decades, the electricity tariff has included a portion – around 10% – which goes towards various other City services, such as area cleaning, which are otherwise largely funded by property rates. This system was initiated when electricity was relatively cheap, and a much smaller portion of the monthly household bill.’’

‘’But this will now be discontinued, following a comprehensive review of the City’s electricity tariff structure. Now that we have seen two decades of exorbitant Eskom electricity price increases – where Eskom electricity now costs a full 400% more than it did in 2004 – there is no more room in the electricity tariff to accommodate a contribution to other services.’’

‘’And so we have now done away with this practice to assist households with the rising cost of electricity, which is a disproportionate part of monthly household expenses. Cape Town has also made unprecedented moves for any metro to offer protection to our Lifeline electricity customers.’’

‘’You will remember that in 2023 we raised the number of units that Lifeline customers can buy at the cheaper, subsidised rate from 350 to 600 units a month. What this means is that Lifeline customers who use 600 units a month will pay more or less the same in this coming year as they did three years ago. Of the metros, Cape Town stands alone in this support measure.

‘’Lifeline customers will further pay no fixed charge, while City customers on the Domestic Tariff will make a proposed fixed monthly contribution of R59,90 to ensure sustainable electricity services.’’

Hill-Lewis announced two changes to fixed charges for water and sanitation The first change is that fixed water and sanitation charges will now be determined by the value of your property and not connection size

‘’In the past, households were charged a particular fixed charge for water based on the size of their water connection – for most homes this was a 15mm connection. This also meant that a well-off household and a low-income household who had the same connection size paid the same fixed charge. Now this fixed charge will be determined by the respective property values, resulting in a saving for the lower income household.’’

The second change is that sanitation, which used to only be an estimated charge based on the volume of water usage, says Hill-Lewis, will now include a fixed charge.

‘’This fixed portion will be offset by a reduction in the volumetric tariff. So the overall cost to the household remains the same, only the structure of the tariff changes. These latest changes will enable infrastructure investment into the future and sustainable service delivery, while offering greater protection to our most economically vulnerable residents,’’ said Cape Town Mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis.

With regards to waste management in Cape Town, there is a change in how the City charges for waste services which will reflect on ratepayer’s bills. Previously only refuse removal was  shown on the bill. Now ratepayers will see both refuse and city-wide cleaning reflected eon the bill.

‘’This is not an additional or new expense to customers: the removal of the electricity contribution to rates fully buffers the financial impact of the new City-wide Cleaning tariff. The City-wide Cleaning tariff will therefore not be a new charge, but merely a change in the method of how City customers contribute to the funding of this service.’’

Indeed, most consumers will still be slightly better off after the change, even if only by a few rands a month. Waste collection continues to be funded by its own tariff, which increases by 7,36% for 25/26 as the City continues to focus in particular on improving waste and cleansing services in areas with lots of backyarders and in informal settlements,’’ added Hill-Lewis.

Furthermore, a total of R88m annually will go to the City’s new Highway and CBD cleaning initiative, helping to keep Cape Town clean Over the same three-year period, says Hill-Lewis, it will be investing a billion Rand in street lights and traffic signals, and just over a billion Rand to purchase more refuse removal vehicles and plant.

He also announced that the City has set aside R2,6bn for road maintenance, R687m for road upgrades and R294m for various congestion relief projects over the three-year MTREF.

A further R123m has been set aside for upgrades to sports facilities, R66m to upgrade our city’s recreation hubs and community halls, and R171m for parks and public spaces.

Additionally, Libraries get R191m in this budget for upgrades and books, and public swimming pools will get more than R95m to ensure, says Hill-Lewis, that they look pristine and operate smoothly.

In terms of homelessness, and R200m is allocated over the three-year medium-term framework to expand and operate these dignified shelters to more parts of the city.

Hill-Lewis also touched on the above-inflation property rates increase of 7.96%. According to the mayor, this is to cover the major growth in more policing resources for a safer Cape Town.

‘’This is all literally being invested straight back into our plan to safeguard our city and its residents. Even with this increase, Cape Town still has the lowest property rates for residential, commercial and industrial properties, as calculated with the nationally-applied rate-in-the-rand formula. In fact, even with the 2025/26 increase applied, Cape Town’s residential rate-in-rand remains below last year’s levels in all other cities.’’

‘’For the current General Valuation (GV) term, there is also a Rates relief increase of 50% for all residential properties under R5 million, with the first R450 000 of property value Rates-free, the highest of all metros. Not only do Capetonians see real results from their rates contributions, and higher property value growth than anywhere else, they also get the best bang for their buck on the property rates itself.’’

‘’We have also, once again, funded the most comprehensive social package in the country, valued at R5,2 billion for 2025/26, up from R3,75 billion in 2022/23. This includes R2,4 billion in rates rebates and R2,8 billion in indigent relief. We continue to offer the highest allocation of free water at 15Kl and free sanitation at 10Kl of all metros in South Africa, and the widest criteria for Lifeline Electricity as mentioned earlier,’’ concluded Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis

The City of Cape Town's 2025/26 Budget has been tabled and is open for public participation, before it is implemented on 1 July 2025.

Done by: Mitchum George