[Listen to a soundbite by Cllr Magda Botha]
Dear Editor
The Walter Sisulu Local Municipality (WSLM) is facing the possibility of a rate boycott after the ANC pushed through a tariff increase that will see some property rates increase by 300%.
Residents of Aliwal North, Jamestown, Burgersdorp, Steynsburg, and Venterstad are buckling under the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, and many simply cannot afford the increases that are now forced on them.
The tariff increases form part of the 2024/2025 municipal budget, which was narrowly passed with the ANC’s 10 votes against the opposition’s nine at a Special Council Meeting on 4 June 2024.
The tariff increases were pushed through despite the DA noting that implementing the new rates would be outside the regulations, as contained in MFMA Circular 126 and premature as the municipality has not finalised the new valuation process for properties in its jurisdiction.
Public engagement on the proposed tariffs has also met with significant resistance from communities, who have indicated the possibility of rate boycotts.
The 2024 total valuation roll decreased with R1 billion in value due to an error and overstatement on the category Public Infrastructure in the 2019 valuation roll, resulting in the municipal manager advising council to keep tariffs unchanged. The new valuations however have seen residential properties increase from R2 billion to R3 billion and agricultural properties from R4 billion to R6 billion. These new valuations, combined with the unchanged tariffs, will result in some exorbitant increases of up to 300% in rates.
Although the municipality has proposed a 50% rebate on properties where rates have increased by more than 20%, the ANC has shown itself untrustworthy, having previously revoked a similar rebate in council with no notice.
The DA strongly advised the council to lower the tariffs.
I have, therefore, written to National and Provincial Treasury requesting their urgent intervention.
The new tariffs clearly violate the rights afforded to ratepayers, breach the regulations of inflationary and affordable increases, and will definitely not help turn around the WSLM’s financial woes.
Rather than increase revenue for the WSLM coffers, the new tariffs will most likely lead to a further decline in collection rates.
The DA believes the road to financial recovery lies not in bleeding an already struggling ratepayer dry, but in finding alternative means of revenue to sustain the municipality.
Regards
Cllr Magda Botha
Chairperson of the Walter Sisulu Finance Portfolio Committee
Bad Princess
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.
Wolf Tribune
A new teacher enters a classroom full of students.
The teacher stands at the front of the room and greets the students, \”Good morning, class.\”
None of the students say anything. One boy at the back of the classroom stands up, \”Good morning, teacher.\”
Puzzled, the teacher carries on. The following morning, the same thing happens. Day after day goes by, and it\’s the same routine.
One morning after greeting the class and the same student standing and greeting, the teacher has had enough, \”Why is it, that every time I walk in and greet the entire room, only you stand up and greet me?\”
In the most broken English, the boy replies, \”Because I are the only one here, what\’s name are Klass\”