While South Africa’s major cities battle crumbling infrastructure, dry taps and decaying road networks, the civil servants running them earn more than the President of the Republic.
As the municipal elections draw near, some 20 days away, public attention must turn from political campaign slogans to the accounting officers holding real administrative power and the multi-billion-rand municipal purse strings.
Across the country’s eight metropolitan municipalities, election posters showcase mayoral candidates and party leaders, yet the individuals exercising direct executive and statutory authority remain largely invisible.
They are municipal managers or better known as City Managers. Their total annual compensation packages command up to R4.8 million, which is substantially higher than President Cyril Ramaphosa’s salary of roughly R3.5 million.
Across South Africa’s eight metros, the officials responsible for running city administrations command substantial remuneration packages, even as several municipalities continue to struggle with audit findings.
Cape Town city manager Lungelo Mbandazayo and Ekurhuleni’s Kagiso Lerutla sit at the top of the list, each with a total annual package of about R4.8 million. eThekwini city manager Musa Mbhele earns more than R4.3 million, followed by Johannesburg’s Floyd Brink and Tshwane’s Johann Mettler at about R3.3 million each.
Buffalo City’s Mxolisi Yawa receives around R2.5 million, while Mangaung’s Sello More earns more than R2.45 million. Nelson Mandela Bay is the exception, with Lonwabo Ngoqo serving in an acting capacity and therefore subject to the municipality’s acting-remuneration provisions. That is about R3.3 million.
The salaries are particularly striking when compared with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s remuneration of roughly R3.4 million to R3.5 million a year.
Here is why you must care: these are far from ceremonial posts. Municipal managers act as chief executive officers, leading the administrative machinery responsible for delivering water, electricity, roads, and sanitation. Yet nationwide, urban delivery is buckling, water networks are collapsing, and municipal financial governance is in severe distress.
SALARY VS AUDIT PERFORMANCE: SOUTH AFRICA’S METRO MANAGERS
Cape Town [R4.8m] ------------------------------ Unqualified
Ekurhuleni [R4.8m] ------------------------------ Unqualified
eThekwini [R4.3m] -------------------------- Qualified / Adverse
Johannesburg [R3.3m] ------------------------------ Qualified
Tshwane [R3.3m] ------------------------------ Qualified
Buffalo City [R2.5m] ------------------------------ Unqualified
Mangaung [R2.45m] ----------------------------- Qualified
Nelson Mandela [Acting] ----------------------------- Qualified
What Does a City Manager Actually Do?
Diagnosing local government failure requires distinguishing political leadership from administrative execution. In an executive mayoral system, voters elect councillors who form the municipal council and elect an executive mayor. The mayor provides political direction, while council determines broad policies, priorities, and budgets.
Translating those decisions into a functioning city falls entirely to the municipal manager. Governed by the Local Government: Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) and the Municipal Systems Act, the city manager serves as chief executive and statutory accounting officer. This means the legal buck stops directly with them regarding municipal finances, multi-billion-rand asset registers and regulatory compliance.
When a water pipe bursts or a power grid fails, the city manager does not physically carry out the repair. However, the administration they lead must maintain the skilled personnel, heavy equipment, supply-chain procurement systems and operational plans to address infrastructure failures promptly.
When service delivery fails, an entrenched institutional blame game takes over: politicians routinely blame bureaucrats, bureaucrats point to political interference and ratepayers are left without essential services.
The framework governing municipal manager compensation is issued by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA). Municipalities are graded on population size, economic output, and generated revenue. Metros occupy Grade 6, which is the highest band, unlocking salary structures modelled after corporate executive suites.
The justification for multi-million-rand salaries rests on private-sector comparability. Metros manage massive balance sheets; the City of Johannesburg alone oversees an annual budget of approximately R90 billion. Proponents argue high remuneration attracts top executive talent and disincentivizes corruption.
However, attempting to professionalize municipalities by pegging executive salaries to corporate rates fails when tested against public reality. Paying corporate-level salaries has not eliminated systemic corruption, nor has it guaranteed executive competence. Instead, corporate benchmarks collide with partisan patronage, leaving ratepayers to fund executive-level packages for dysfunctional public administration.
“So that big salary is not drawing the best talent; it is getting the most compliant person to deliver political patronage. So we need to think differently about it,” analyst Tessa Dooms told The Debrief.
Municipal managers are appointed by municipal councils on fixed-term contracts, typically for five years, following interview and screening processes designed to enforce minimum statutory competencies.
In practice, appointments frequently diverge from statutory principles. A prime example is the ongoing controversy surrounding the appointment of Dr. Floyd Brink in Johannesburg. Candidates overseeing a R90-billion budget are legally expected to possess extensive financial management and operational experience in large urban centres.
Brink’s appointment faced intense legal challenges and public scrutiny because much of his prior municipal background was spent in rural municipal settings and within traffic management divisions, rather than leading major municipal financial or supply-chain departments.
This disconnect highlights a systemic vulnerability: the conflation of administrative capability with political patronage.
Commenting on the structural root of municipal appointments, governance expert Prof. Dumisani Jantjies notes:
"Many of the municipality managers' appointments are a lot political-linked as opposed to competence-linked. So I feel we need to have a different way of thinking of getting municipality managers. There shouldn't be the perception—I'm using the word perception—that they're there mainly to get money to use it for political reasons and so on, hence the appointments become aligned a lot with political principles in particular. So there isn't evidence that they're capable, because if they're capable, you'll want to see municipalities being able to perform."
Data from the Auditor-General tracking executive stability across metros reflects acute administrative turnover:
Nelson Mandela cycled through 18 acting city managers in 10 years (16 since 2020), severely crippling institutional continuity and financial oversight, The Daily Maverick reported.
Mangaung and Buffalo City metros cycled through 4 accounting officers across a single four-year evaluation cycle, diluting executive accountability.
Then you had repeated court challenges and council interdicts regarding city manager appointments in Johannesburg and Tshwane following coalition floor shifts.
Experts warned that when appointments are contested, the fallout paralyzes municipal operations. In fragile coalition environments, disputes over the city manager post freeze departmental budgets and halt procurement, even as revenue collection and payroll must continue.
Dooms stresses that multi-million-rand salaries actively entrench this patronage system rather than attracting independent professionals:
”These are people running companies. Even [if] a municipality was listed on the JSE, it would be on the top end of it—90-billion-rand budgets per year. Are we let our municipalities, particularly the metros, led by the best? And if we are, then how does it happen? So the idea about trying to almost professionalize and then privatize local government entities... has led to this idea that you attract the best talent by putting the bar in terms of salaries at competitive rates with the private sector.
The problem with that is it is not real politics... The second is patronage. Those managers are managers of political patronage in the main. That’s what it is. So that big salary is not drawing the best talent. It is getting the most compliant person to deliver political patronage. So we need to think differently about it.”
Dooms emphasizes that overcoming municipal breakdown requires political courage to decouple administration from party machinery:
“You can come into political office and make a choice not to rearrange people according to your political preferences, make a choice about hiring the most competent people. That’s what our system was designed around: it was designed around the Mandelas of society coming in and making the right kinds of political choices. And so right now, we need leaders who are going to be brave enough to make those choices, even though it goes against their political party’s interest.”
An official relying on political protection cannot maintain the professional independence needed to exercise their statutory duties and protect public funds, Dooms added.
With local government elections approaching on November 4, public debate remains fixated on political party manifestos and coalition deals. But all experts note that fixing governance in the cities, requires much higher level of accountability.