By Ferial Haffajee, Associate Editor
We’ve been having a hard look at the City budget and what it means for us. The graphic shows that we are going to all be hit hard by rates and tariff increases come 1 July. The Budget for 2026/27 passed in Council last week has painful implications for your pocket and also for inflation.
Working-class homes (property value of R300,000 or below) are really going to struggle with increases of 13.4% – driven by high water and electricity charges. For low middle-class homes (most of Joburg), your bill is going to be an average 8.4% higher and for those of us with properties worth R700,000 or higher, your monthly account is going up by an average 9.3% or more.
I’ve been deep reading into the Budget and the increases could be higher than this because of how the City will calculate your electricity and water consumption. Whether you own or rent, expect huge increases. We thank Julia Fish and Louise Flanagan of JoburgCAN (Community Action Network) for help with the numbers.
I wanted to ask for a favour, if you can – if you value our work, would you consider becoming a Daily Maverick Joburg Insider? This means joining our community who help us create our investigations, graphics and journalism for Joburg, it would be lovely and will help us do more.
What is the Water Demand Service Levy? The City claims this is to cover cost over and above the bulk purchase through consumption tariffs, but to maintain the system and metering service. It was introduced as a way to force municipalities to spend revenue on maintenance but we can see no direct ringfencing or reported spend on this levy. It has increased from R65.08 p/m fixed charge to R107.74 or R123.90 incl VAT p/m.
Article: Daily Maverick
