We Will Take on Water Tanker Mafia

Dear Editor

A year since Mayor Nasiphi Moya’s election, Hammanskraal residents still do not have potable water in their taps. And the City now spends more money than ever before on water tankers.

In 2023, the Tshwane Metro and the Department of Water and Sanitation devised a solution to the Hammanskraal water crisis that involved by-passing the polluted Apies River.

Within a few months Magalies Water completed a modular water treatment plant on the Pienaars River, one of the biggest such projects on the African continent.

The Klipdrift package plant can deliver clean water to people’s taps – if only Tshwane can complete its part of the project.

All four phases of the project should have been done by June this year, but only the first phase has been fully delivered. In other words, only residents in phase one have clean water from Magalies Water.

Today, I will meet with many of the affected residents to highlight their plight. Since the takeover of an ANC-led coalition in Tshwane, the ANC and its coalition partners seem to have lost interest in Hammanskraal.

Last month Mayor Moya appeared before a parliamentary committee and could not give a coherent account of why the project is not yet complete. Communication with residents has also ceased.

The irony is that ActionSA, the party now in coalition with the ANC and the EFF, made clean water in Hammanskraal a major part of their 2021 local government election campaign.

The work needed to deliver clean water, and to banish the reign of the water tanker mafia, was done under a DA-led coalition. Now this project is at risk.

Under the banner of an ANC-led coalition, Mayor Moya seems less concerned about clean water in Hammanskraal as a way to cutting dependence and spending on exploitative water tankers.

In the February adjustment budget, the first since Moya’s election, she proposed a 64% increase in water tanker spending for areas that already have formal water reticulation (as opposed to informal settlements).

If the Hammanskraal clean water project had been completed, it would have allowed the City to cut spending on water tankers. Water from taps is not only better for residents, it costs less than water from tankers.

Instead, under an ANC/EFF/ActionSA coalition Tshwane is likely to have spent more on water tankers in the 2024/25 financial year than ever before in the City’s history.

A government under my leadership will finish what we started in Hammanskraal, and deliver clean water to people’s taps. The DA is not beholden to the water tanker mafia.

Regards

Ald Cilliers Brink
DA Tshwane Mayoral Candidate