Only God can save municipalities as collapse deepens

The first signs of municipal collapse do not appear in council meetings, parliament or in political party boardrooms where coalitions are discussed. 

They appear in burst water pipes left unrepaired for months, in roads riddled with potholes, in the hum of generators as communities brace for rolling power outages caused by transformer failures and in the stench of sewage that flows in our streets and into our homes as municipalities continue to promise to come and resolve the problems but never come.