That many of South Africa’s 257 municipalities are in crisis is not in question. Also painfully clear is that many metropolitan councils, which oversee the country’s six largest cities of Johannesburg, Cape Town, eThekwini, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Nelson Mandela Bay, Buffalo City and Mangaung, are facing governance and delivery problems that were almost unthinkable a few decades ago.

The economic and social consequences of this reality are beyond serious.

Rapid urbanisation over the past few decades means that the overwhelming majority of those who live in South Africa live in urban areas and especially in these cities.

That means that if these six cities are not working, prospects for stimulating growth and job creation and tackling deep-seated poverty and inequality are close to zero.

This is not news to anyone, especially those exposed to the water cuts, potholes and general decay that have come to characterise these areas.

What may be news is that there are several credible initiatives under way that are designed to change the way cities are being managed financially and operationally with the aim of restarting growth engines that have stalled.

One of these is a R54-billion performance-based grant that can be unlocked for water, sanitation, electricity and waste infrastructure services if these six metros meet certain performance targets.

Known as the Metro Trading Services Reform, the incentive was formally launched in mid-March, with the ambitious goal of mobilising more than R100-billion in infrastructure investment over the coming six years – a figure based on the fact that recipient municipalities will be required to match the infrastructure grants with their own revenues and borrowings.

Importantly, particularly from a constitutional perspective, the money is conditional on performance targets that have been set by the metros themselves in relation to their trading services.

However, there are guardrails in which such targets must be set, including that these services be run as integrated businesses, and that revenues from those services be ringfenced and reinvested.

This architecture recognises that many metros are either failing to provide services, collect revenue adequately, or are using the revenue collected to invest in the maintenance and upgrade of the supportive infrastructure.

The reform is being implemented at a time when municipalities are expected to spend R205-billion of the R1-trillion that is budgeted for infrastructure over the coming three years.

It is also coupled to various other reforms, some legislative, that enable national government to move beyond municipal oversight to more active intervention, especially where capacity constraints are blocking infrastructure delivery.

These changes are long overdue, as poor service delivery is not merely an inconvenience, it’s an impediment to growth and development, as businesses cannot be expected to invest in an atmosphere of dysfunction, decay and rampant corruption.

That said, these reforms must be about building capacity and not substituting it. In the long run, South Africa’s cities will be responsive to the needs of residents and businesses only if they have a direct political mandate from those they are serving.