Municipal Officials Denying Water to Communities

Dear Editor

Late last week, after assessing detailed information from around the country, the DA communicated that South Africa is now in the grips of a national water supply crisis, and we committed to fighting this in every way that we can.

The examples of towns and cities in the Free State, Northern Cape, North West, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and across rural and metropolitan Gauteng, which experience water shut-offs, unsafe water supply, intermittent water supply, water shedding, water restrictions, or water rotation, is escalating.

For this reason, the DA now calls for criminal and human-rights investigations into officials at the helm of the worst offending municipalities – who are denying water to residents, businesses, schools, hospitals, industry and agriculture.

Just this week the DA has identified numerous further water supply failures, including:

• Matjhabeng Municipality is leaving leaking pipes to shed thousands of litres of clean water, now over a period of multiple weeks, unfixed,
• Makana Municipality is leaving the town of Makanda with parts having no water for going on two weeks,
• Letsemeng Municipality’s towns of Phambili, Koffiefontein, Luckhoff, Petrusburg, and Jacobsdal are left without water for days,
• Gamagara Municipality’s Olifrantshoek town has been without water for 63 days,
• Dihlabeng Municipality’s town of Clarens has suffered a broken water pump, causing unpredictable pumping to residents for weeks,
• Metsimaholo Municipality’s town of Deneysville suffered a week-long water cut last week.

The DA cannot accept that local government officials in affected areas have no clear maintenance schedules, fail to fix leaks, don’t replace faulty pumps or valves, or fail to repair their broken water treatment plants.

This failure has resulted in a water supply crisis, through their actions and omissions.

Officials of these municipalities, and political leaders to whom they account, must take responsibility, and any breaches of any laws with criminal or human-rights sanctions must now be pursued.

Water was delivered in the past, and in places where this has ceased through infrastructural problems that officials failed to fix timeously, they must face prosecution for violating a basic constitutional right.

If budget was not made available for maintenance, while other non-essential items were purchased or procured, the political leaders must face the full might of the law, including breaches of municipal finance laws.

In the past months, DA Leader John Steenhuisen has been in correspondence with the SAHRC to implement this human rights-led approach to solving the water crisis.

This week John Steenhuisen has again written to the SAHRC, asking that they escalate this investigation nationally to identify those at local government who are responsible for failure to deliver water to their residents.

The SAHRC’s report on this major national water crisis, and failures by municipal officials to deliver the right of access to water, can be handed over for human-rights and criminal investigation and prosecution.

The DA will not accept that the national water crisis becomes the “new normal”.

Regards

Willie Aucamp MP
DA National Spokesperson