Publications
Partners
Tshwane residents are fed up with the mess in council.
The capital city has been without a mayor for over a month after the DA’s Randall Williams resigned following a damning Auditor-General report that found the municipality in an unfavourable liquidity position.
His resignation set in a motion a series of dramatic events that ended with William’s replacement, Cope’s Murunwa Makwarela, resigning last Friday after he was accused of fraud.
The former council speaker produced an alleged fake letter declaring he was not insolvent.
READ: City of Tshwane is hunting for a new mayor, again
On Monday, a new speaker was elected to council, also in dramatic fashion. ATM’s Mncedi Ndzwanana was voted in as speaker after votes cast by 69 DA councillors in the election were disqualified after being declared spoilt ballots.
In a bid to weed out possible party line traitors, the DA had apparently marked the ballots, a move the IEC declared illegal as it identified voters.
Tshwane residents, though, say all of this is just politicians wasting time.
“They have turned council to ko “mahlanyeng” (mental institution),” Smanga Masemola from Nellmapius said.
Masemola, who owns a small stall outside Denlyn Shopping Centre selling sweets and snacks, said things were falling apart as politicians continued acting like kids.
“I have been having electricity issues. The workers are doing as they please because there’s no one doing any oversight over their work. They were going to extort money from me. They switched off my electricity even though I don’t owe the municipality anything. The next thing I knew, they wanted me to pay them on their side to “sort things out”.
“These sorts of things wouldn’t be happening if the councillors we doing their work,” Masemola fumed.
“We don’t care who is in charge. They must for once put politics aside and just get to work. It’s frustrating that we work hard to ensure that we pay for services and yet those services are hardly rendered.
“We get that they are not necessarily responsible for the load shedding but things like water and drainage fall under them. They should at least ensure those are always provided,” a gogo from Buffer Zone in Mamelodi said.
READ: Unknown member brings vigour to DA leadership race as she contests all top positions
Another gogo also from Mamelodi said that the roads were horrendous. “There was no difference after the DA took over the municipality, just look at the roads, they are horrendous, they are nothing but potholes, slowly going back to gravel,” she said.
Andile Bhoya from the same area said that the issue causing potholes was the ineffective drainage system.
“The drains are blocked. All the rainwater from Mamelodi Gardens flows from there and just stops here and causes flooding, eventually leading to these potholes you see here,” Bhoya added.
Bhoya echoed the other Tshwane residents, saying that the politicians should set their differences aside to deliver services.
He said:
Ndzwanana now has just over a week to convene council so that they could elect a new mayor. The mayor’s mayoral committee will have to work fast to get the city’s budget passed before the end of the month as stipulated by National Treasury after an extension.
