Innovation in Local Government Series - presented by Business Engineering

Drakenstein: Effective Leadership, Good Governance and Getting Things Done

Guest: Dr. Johan Leibbrandt, City Manager, Drakenstein Municipality

Host: Dan Claassen, Managing Director, Future Cities Africa

Topics: Leadership and Corporate Culture - Financial Sustainability - Economic Development - Digital Transformation - Performance Management

Drakenstein Municipality holds 11 consecutive clean audits, has been named South Africa's best secondary city for governance and service delivery, and currently holds the title of the Western Cape's top municipality. Dr. Johan Leibbrandt, who joined as city manager in 2017 with a specific mandate to drive change, unpacks the disciplines, culture and systems that make consistent performance possible - and what other municipalities can learn from it.

Key questions and takeaways

What does effective leadership actually look like inside a high-performing municipality?

Johan is clear that everything starts at the top - and that the single most important decision any municipality makes is who it appoints.

• Appoint on merit, not on political affiliation. No municipality can expect results from people who cannot do the job.
• A shared vision - in Drakenstein's case, a city of excellence - must be cascaded to every level of the organisation, from the city manager to the most junior labourer. Everyone must understand their role in delivering it.
• You manage things and systems. You lead people. The distinction matters. Motivating people, keeping them out of comfort zones, and bringing them along on a change journey is leadership work - not management work.
• Corporate culture can make or break any strategy. A toxic culture will consume even the best plans. Drakenstein's culture is built around three things: being customer-centric, focusing on service delivery, and getting things done.
• The SUPLIS programme - "the soup must listen" - gives junior staff a direct voice upward. Supervisors meet regularly with ground-level staff, listen to what they need, feed that back to management, and ensure there is a budget response. Personal development plans are linked to skills gaps identified in the same process.
• Simple disciplines matter enormously: answer every phone within five rings, respond to every email within 24 hours, ensure all frontline staff wear name tags. These are not minor details - they are the foundation of a service culture.
• All staff must be apolitical in their work. A pothole is a pothole regardless of which party represents the ward.

"A toxic corporate culture will eat up all your plans. You can come up with a wonderful strategy, but if the culture is toxic, it will mess it up immediately."

What financial disciplines underpin 11 consecutive clean audits?

Drakenstein's financial turnaround is as instructive as its governance record. In 2020, the municipality's Ratings Africa sustainability score was 34 - well below the 50 threshold for viability. Five years later it stands at 73, placing Drakenstein in the top five municipalities nationally for financial sustainability.

• A clean audit is not the goal - it is the result of doing everything else correctly. Ethical leadership and compliance with core legislative functions produce clean audits as a natural outcome.
• Fiscal discipline and efficiency drove the turnaround. Every spending decision was questioned: is it necessary, and can it be done for less?
• Drakenstein uses a DAAP - a Department Audit Action Plan - an adaptation of the standard MAAP process. Every internal audit finding generates a departmental response plan, ensuring the municipality is fully prepared before the Auditor-General arrives.
• Revenue collection stands at 98%, against a national norm of 95% and a provincial benchmark that briefly saw Drakenstein ranked first in the Western Cape.
• Staff costs sit at 26.5% of total expenditure, well within the national norm of 25 to 40%.
• Electricity distribution losses are 6.6% - below the national norm of 7 to 10%. Water distribution losses are 17.8%, within the national norm of 15 to 30%.
• All creditors are paid within 30 days. Businesses with a turnover below R1 million are paid within 20 days to support their cash flow.
• When the municipal valuation roll grew by 63% between 2021 and 2026 - with some areas like Val de Vie increasing by over 200% - Drakenstein capped property rate increases at 12.5%, the first municipality in South Africa to receive CoGTA approval to do so. The message to residents and investors: Drakenstein is not here to extract value, it is here to grow the economy.
• The indigent support package stands at R1,750 per month, nearly double the national norm of R950.

"The trick is not to overcharge your community. Rather grow the economy organically - that will enlarge your budget and create jobs. If all you do is balance your budget by increasing tariffs, at some point the community will no longer be able to afford them."

What is Drakenstein's approach to economic development and investor relations?

Johan draws a sharp distinction between municipalities that pursue economic development as a direct function - often at the expense of their core mandate - and those that create the conditions for investment to flow naturally.

• Invest in infrastructure first. Wastewater treatment, roads, water and sanitation, electricity - these create capacity for development. Reliable services, maintained public spaces and a well-governed environment are what investors assess first.
• Maintenance is the differentiator between a weak municipality and a strong one. Preventative maintenance must be the default.
• Remove red tape and roll out the red carpet. Investors are partners, not supplicants. Drakenstein does not ask, "Why can't we do this?" It asks, "How do we make this work?"
• Building plan turnaround times are 30 days for plans under 500 square metres and 60 days for larger plans - processed electronically through the Collaborator system from Business Engineering. Speed here directly translates into ground-breaking, job creation and economic activity.
• Drakenstein's unemployment rate is 17.4% - one of the lowest in South Africa - by design, not by default. The valuation roll has grown 63% since 2021.
• Tourism and sport - including cycling and the wine industry - are actively supported as economic drivers.

"You bring your money, we follow our processes. No kickbacks, no favours. You do your job, we do ours - and there is a win-win at the end of it."

What has Drakenstein's digital transformation journey looked like in practice?

Technology at Drakenstein is not decorative. Each investment is tied to a specific operational problem and measured for results.

• The Collaborator system from Business Engineering has been in use for over 10 years across contract management, contract registers, land use, administration, and electronic building plan submissions. Drakenstein was among the first municipalities in South Africa to allow fully electronic building plan submissions and payments.
• A citizen-facing app used for reporting potholes, faults and service problems with GPS location and photo. Residents receive a reference number on submission and a closing notification once the issue is resolved. Compliance is monitored weekly at management level.
• GIS is used across all five directorates. Johan's principle: every strategy must be mapped. Move from words to spatial representation. If it cannot be placed on a map, it is not properly planned.
• Drones are used daily - for aerial photography, monitoring of informal settlements, law enforcement and bringing field conditions into the boardroom without physically visiting every site.
• All 52 critical traffic intersections are equipped with uninterrupted power supplies and lithium batteries, keeping traffic lights operational during load shedding and outages. Drakenstein is believed to be the only municipality in South Africa with this fully implemented.
• A homegrown tariff calculator on the municipal website allows residents and businesses to calculate exactly what they will pay from 1 July each year - distributed via WhatsApp to all wards.
• On AI: Johan distinguishes between "red" AI - using it to think for you and conveying the output as your own - and "green" AI - using your own intelligence and asking AI to add value to it. Drakenstein is investing in staff training to use AI productively.

"Without innovation and technology, you are stuck. You must constantly look at new ideas that make your job better, make you more productive, and help you serve the public better."

How does performance management at Drakenstein ensure that what gets planned actually gets done?

This is where Johan is most emphatic. Performance management was the primary tool used to turn Drakenstein around after 2017, and it goes significantly further than the standard municipal approach.

• The standard quarterly performance management cycle is used - but as an early warning system, not just a reporting exercise. If a target is off-track in the first quarter, the question is immediately asked: what must change in the remaining three quarters to achieve the annual goal?
• Over and above quarterly performance management, a daily and weekly monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system tracks every decision made in management meetings. A dedicated M&E officer tracks all commitments against due dates, and a dashboard presented at every weekly management meeting shows what is green, amber or red - and why.
• All members of the mayoral committee sign performance agreements with the executive mayor. Since 2021, all ward councillors also sign performance contracts and are assessed against them.
• Every meeting produces an action plan, not minutes. The action plan records what must be done, who is personally responsible (by name, not title), and by when.
• Focus on the 20% of issues that will produce 80% of results. Once those are resolved, move to the next tier. Measuring the wrong things produces nothing.
• GOYA - Get Off Your Ass - is a cultural principle as much as a management instruction. City managers cannot manage remotely. You visit the parks, the cemeteries, the problem sites. You take pictures, you set deadlines, and you track them through M&E.

"The performance gap is the difference between the target you set and what you actually achieve. The trick is to close that gap. If you only rely on the vanilla performance management system, you will not turn an organisation around. You will not create a culture where there is a sense of urgency."

Series: Innovation in Local Government, presented by Business Engineering

Produced by: Future Cities Africa