Presented by Business Engineering
Guest:
Dawie de Jager, Deputy Municipal Manager, Kouga Local Municipality
Episode Focus:
How Kouga went from financial distress in 2016 to becoming the best-performing municipality in the Eastern Cape (2025 SAPOA | Ratings Africa Awards) and achieving repeated clean audits.
Key Takeaways:
- Turnaround Foundation (2016 onwards)
- Clean, ethical governance and strict financial discipline were non-negotiable
- Appointed competent, ethical people despite salary-cap challenges
- Strong consequence management for fraud and unethical behaviour
- Excellent CFOs enforced compliance with the MFMA led to Kouga's first clean audit and continuous improvement
- Performance Management & Oversight
- Cascaded performance agreements from top to bottom
- Introduced Ignite system with monthly tracking and live dashboards
- Strong political-administrative alignment and council oversight
- Infrastructure & Visible Results
- Fixed dilapidated bulk water & wastewater treatment works (e.g., state-of-the-art upgrades at KwaNomzamo)
- Massive road resealing program (targeting 71% of roads) + new gravel-to-tar projects
- Innovation in Service Delivery
- Smart technology on suction tankers, smart metering pilots, upgraded wastewater plants
- Central incident management system: call centre - job dispatch - photo proof - SMS notification - customer rates the service
- Ward-based WhatsApp groups, multilingual communication, online building-plan submissions
- Digital Transformation (Collaborator & Beyond)
- Collaborator platform streamlined document management, policy reviews, council resolutions, and agenda preparation
- PowerBI service-delivery dashboards give real-time ward-level insights
- Early AI exploration: internal search on documents, future WhatsApp AI assistant (with caution)
- Future Outlook
- Balancing cutting-edge tech with the human touch South Africans still value
- Embracing AI and smart tools proactively 'so we are not left behind'
Kouga's success recipe = ethical leadership + financial discipline + competent people + smart digital systems that make governance and service delivery transparent, fast, and accountable. A standout example for local government in South Africa.
