Gauteng

The years of neglect of our water infrastructure across Gauteng, with a lack of proactive maintenance, and regular upgrades of existing infrastructure, coupled with poor communication from Rand Water, have left residents without water for days on end.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng is deeply concerned about this unacceptable behaviour from Rand Water. This entity continuously blames vandalism for its woes when it is its job to secure the infrastructure.

The blame is shifted to municipalities when they should also be maintaining their own infrastructure. Furthermore, Rand Water continuously talks about municipalities exceeding their daily quota while doing minimal campaigning to conserve water and protect water sources.

The world celebrated World Water Day on 22 March 2023, and South Africa continues to celebrate National Water Week from 20-26 March to raise awareness about the global water crisis and the need to manage water resources sustainably. In reality, Gauteng residents had nothing to celebrate as areas of Lesedi Local Municipality, such as Heidelberg, are still battling without water after more than a week. Schools and residents must buy water for drinking and cleaning as the taps are dry.

Every time the Vereeniging plant experiences an infrastructure failure, the Rand Water Eikenhof reservoir system fails to supply water to large parts of Randburg, Roodepoort, Hursthill, Crosby and the Commando system that feeds water to Johannesburg South.

To add insult to injury, Joburg Water has again left large parts of the East and Northeast of Johannesburg without water. As much as we appreciate maintenance work, the timing of the maintenance after two weeks of intermittent water supply and lack of roaming water tankers is leaving residents highly frustrated.

Areas of Benoni in Ekurhuleni also suffered from water outages over the long weekend. As much as water entities would like to blame the system’s failures on loadshedding, neglect and the lack of electrical infrastructure maintenance and upgrades have led to the current dire situation.

World Water Day is about celebrating access to water, about the conservation of water resources. The Minister for Water and Sanitation, Senzo Mchunu, announced a R28 billion investment into 12 more Rand Water reservoirs while calling on municipalities to use less. However, as much as any capital investment must be welcomed, the DA insists that the Minister adopt a cooperative approach to assist municipalities with the maintenance upgrades where the municipalities cannot do it independently.

The DA has launched an online petition demanding that Rand Water act decisively and supply water. Sign our petition here

Note to editors: A voice note from Cllr Cilliers Brink pertaining to this statement can be found here in English and here in Afrikaans.

The DA in Tshwane will not stop fighting for stable, accountable government in Tshwane, even as the Gauteng ANC-EFF coalition tries everything in their power to make the City ungovernable with residents as collateral. We will also resist any effort by the ANC premier of Gauteng Panyaza Lesufi to create conditions for the City to be placed under administration.

Attorneys for the DA and our coalition partners have written to the ANC-EFF puppet Speaker of Tshwane to demand that he resume the Council meeting to elect an Executive Mayor to serve and reassure the residents of the City.

Yesterday the Speaker adjourned this meeting on the pretext of a dispute within COPE over who their sole councillor must be. The issue of who is to fill COPE’s vacancy is, howver, simple: the Speaker can merely consult the IEC to determine who the next person is on the list.

The real reason the Speaker obstructed the progress of the meeting was that the ANC-EFF coalition does not have the numbers to elect an Executive Mayor.

Previously the ANC-EFF coalition relied on the support of individual picked-off councillors from other parties to secretly vote against their parties and their electoral mandate. But each of the parties in the Multi-Party Coalition have now taken steps to clean house and ensure the underhanded tactics previously used cannot again succeed. Three ActionSA councillors have been fired. The police is also investigating an allegation by another ActionSA councillor that he was offered a R2 million bribe to secretly vote for the ANC-EFF coalition.

Premier Panyaza Lesufi has been instrumental in forging the Gauteng ANC-EFF coalition and, adding deed to his word, causing the current chaos in Tshwane. He personally persuaded the now-disgraced COPE councillor Murunwa Makwarela to become the ANC-EFF puppet mayoral candidate. Makwarela was later discovered to be an unrehabilitated insolvent.

It is clear that Lesufi’s game plan for the political benefit of the ANC-EFF coalition is to cause chaos in Tshwane and manufacture conditions for the City to be placed under ‘administration’ by his provincial executive committee. Residents will not forget that the last time the ANC Gauteng government ‘intervened’ in Tshwane, it caused financial devastation and the breakdown of financial controls.

When the ANC-EFF last sought to capture Tshwane, the DA obtained a Constitutional Court order against the Gauteng government. We will use this precedent to defend Tshwane against Lesufi’s prying hands.