ActionSA condemns the eThekwini Municipality’s wasteful decision to appeal the landmark Pietermaritzburg High Court judgment ordering it to fulfil its constitutional obligation to provide residents with clean and safe water. The appeal is set to proceed today.
ActionSA’s court victory was a landmark judgment in the fight against the systemic failure of municipalities across South Africa to uphold residents’ constitutional rights to a clean and healthy environment. As sewage infrastructure continues to collapse across the country, communities are being forced to live alongside overflowing sewage, polluted rivers and contaminated beaches.
Any municipality that respects the Constitution and residents would have accepted the judgment, taken responsibility for its failures and redirected its resources towards fixing the infrastructure crisis facing its residents.
Instead, eThekwini has chosen to spend residents’ money fighting a court judgment that simply requires the municipality to fulfil its constitutional obligations. Rather than fixing its failing sewage infrastructure, the municipality appears more committed to defending its failures in court while untreated sewage continues to flow into rivers, lagoons and beaches.
ActionSA will continue to use every available avenue to hold municipalities accountable and to defend the constitutional rights of South Africans. We believe that every resident deserves clean water, a safe environment and municipalities that serve them and not municipalities that waste their money defending their failure to do so.
After 4 November, an ActionSA-led eThekwini will put an end to this wasteful expenditure and ensure residents’ money is spent on fixing water and sewage infrastructure, not defending municipal failures in court.
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