The City of Matlosana — Klerksdorp, Orkney, Stilfontein and Kanana — is the North West's largest non-metro municipality. Its unpaid bulk electricity account with Eskom went to court in 2020 (City of Matlosana Local Municipality v Eskom Holdings, Gauteng Division Johannesburg, case 35921/20, judgments July 2022 and May 2023). On 9 March 2023 the court permitted Eskom to attach the municipality's bank account for R1.5 billion in arrears. Executive Mayor James Tsolela: "We owe Eskom an amount of R1.5 billion, which we are trying to service... we find ourselves having to underpay Eskom."
The South African Human Rights Commission's North West inquiry report of 17 November 2025 named Matlosana among fourteen municipalities violating residents' rights to water, sanitation and a healthy environment through cuts, sewage spills and waste failures. On 20 August 2026 the Commission found separately that the city's termination of its Free Basic Alternative Energy programme for indigent households violated human rights. In February 2026 the ANC's North West provincial secretary asked the MEC to place the city under s139(1)(b) administration, citing collapsed governance and the council's reinstatement of a chief financial officer it had dismissed. By September 2026 the Eskom debt was reported at R1.9 billion.