Rubbish piles have ceased to be mere eyesores in Nelson Mandela Bay; they are now treated as landmarks.
Ask anyone in Bloemendal, in Gqeberha’s northern areas, to direct you to the local plumber, the one who has been fixing geysers and burst pipes for 20 years, and no-one will give you a street name or house number.
A finger points instead: "Jy kan hom kry next to daai groot rubbish dump".
The dump has become the map.
Directions are now measured in proximity to refuse, "two piles down from the corner", "net voor die taxi rank se rubbish pile".
The heap doesn’t just collect waste.
It collects identities, turning discarded refuse into the only co-ordinates that matter.
In this new geography of neglect, the rubbish no longer marks what has been thrown away.
It marks where people live, work and wait.
And so, the city undergoes a grim rebranding.
Gqeberha, once proudly the Windy City, where the cool breeze off Algoa Bay promised freshness, now carries a crueller label: one of the world’s dirtiest cities, a stain worn by the struggling Nelson Mandela Bay metro.
Residents are left asking one desperate question: can the 2026/27 budget offer any real prospect of improved waste collection, or will the metro’s reputation as one of SA’s dirtiest cities be cemented for another year?
The draft budget answered that question.
If the Bay’s draft 2026/27 waste management budget is any measure of intent, residents have their answer; do not expect improvement.
The figures tabled before council on March 24 tell a story no service delivery pledge can contradict.
When a municipality raises the tariff for a service while simultaneously cutting the budget to deliver it, ratepayers are entitled to ask where the money is going.
The answer, largely, is salaries and the servicing of debt, not trucks, infrastructure and enforcement.
The draft budget proposes a refuse tariff increase of 6.5%, effective from July 1.
Households and businesses across Gqeberha, Kariega and Despatch will pay more for waste collection.
What they will not receive in return is a better service.
The waste management operating budget for 2026/27 has been set at R626,023,000.
Against the current year’s adjusted budget of R662,191,000, that is a cut of R36.2m, or 5.5%.
Measured against the original 2025/26 budget of R675,993,000, the rollback reaches R50m, or 7.4%.
This is not a freeze. It is not stagnation.
It is a deliberate reduction in the money allocated to collect the city’s rubbish, clear its illegal dumping hotspots, maintain its landfill sites and keep an already ageing fleet on the road.
The medium-term picture offers no reassurance.
The waste management budget is projected to recover partially to R667m in 2027/28, before falling again to R651m in 2028/29.
There is no investment trajectory here, only a budget compressed and partially released across three years, shaped by fiscal affordability rather than any commitment to service improvement.
The municipality’s own audited outcome for waste management in 2024/25 was R604.5m, confirming a consistent pattern: less spent than budgeted, less delivered than promised.
The budget document contains a disclosure that should alarm every resident.
Waste management arrear debt — money owed to the municipality by ratepayers who have not paid their refuse bills — stood at R826.6m million in December 2025, up from R742.9m in June 2025: an increase of R83.7m in six months.
The municipality is recovering less of what it bills while spending less on the service it is billing for.
Against this backdrop, consider what the municipality is attempting to maintain: weekly waste collections across 60 wards; 18 drop-off centres; two operational landfill sites; a compactor fleet already under strain from a lapsed vehicle contract; and a complaints system obliged by service standards to respond within 24 hours, a target it routinely fails to meet.
Across the entire three-year Medium Term Revenue and Expenditure Framework, not a single rand has been allocated to new solid waste infrastructure.
No new facilities. No transfer stations. No upgrades.
Every cent of the R35.3m capital allocation goes towards renewing infrastructure that is already fully depreciated.
The 6.5% refuse tariff increase is not a funding mechanism for improvement.
It is a cost-recovery exercise for a service in managed decline.
The budget acknowledges as much: tariff increases are driven by rising employee costs, contracted services, debt impairment and finance charges, not by investment in expanded or improved service delivery.
Ratepayers will pay more so that the municipality can cover its wage bill and service its debts.
Not to buy new trucks. Not to open new drop-off sites. Not to enforce by-laws against illegal dumping. Not to answer the phone when a missed collection is reported.
With local government elections approaching, residents will hear a great deal about cleaner streets, reliable refuse collection and renewed commitment to service delivery.
Politicians of every stripe will make pledges.
Manifestos will be printed and distributed.
The budget, however, is not a manifesto.
It is a legally binding statement of what a municipality actually intends to do with public money.
This draft budget tells residents precisely what to expect: less money for waste management, a higher bill for the privilege and no new infrastructure for the next three years.
The rubbish piles are not going anywhere. The budget has made sure of that.
- The municipality’s 2026/27 budget was approved by council on June 8 with 61 votes in favour. This analysis is based on the draft budget tabled on March 24.
Dr Claire Botha is a health economist and policy analyst with a focus on public sector policy analysis, health financing and economics, costing and resource allocation. Her work spans more than 15 years, in diverse sectors such as government, non-governmental, higher education and research management.
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