night when I received this SMS from my son: "Mom and dad, our water
has been cut off. What do we need to do?"
I smiled to myself and replied: "You obviously used too much water
today. Wait until midnight and it will come back on again."
The "cut-off" was the result of the water management device I had
installed in my home earlier this year. These devices provide each
household with 200 litres of water a day, free, at the normal flow
rate. People who register on the City of Cape Town's indigency
database get 350 litres per day, free (the most generous free
allocation in the country). Whatever is not used gets carried over to
the
next day. You can get additional water every day if you specify how
much you are prepared to pay per month.
The purpose of the device is to save water (crucial in light of the
growing shortages), to help residents avoid running up huge bills they
cannot afford (often because of leaks), and to ensure that the
municipality can viably provide every member of the public with access
to free, clean water, as is their constitutional right.
Contrary to the ANC's propaganda, the City does not cut off water to
domestic properties. In the most extreme circumstances, when people
have failed to respond to overdue bills for months and months, they
may be put on the trickle system. If your toilet cistern is filling
up on the "trickle system" it will seem as if nothing is coming out of
your tap until the cistern is full. That may be
irritating and inconvenient, but in every instance where people are
placed on the "trickle system" they could have avoided it by taking a
small measure of personal responsibility. They could have gone to
their local council office and made fair arrangements to pay off their
arrears. Or they could have registered on the City's indigency
database and had a free water management device installed.
Then they would continue to get their generous free daily allocation
on full flow. People who end up on the "trickle system" have made no
effort to do either.
If people experience problems they can use the City's SMS line
dedicated solely to dealing with water and sanitation problems. There
is a 24-hour call out service for emergency cases.
No other City in the country offers this kind of comprehensive service.
And yet the Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional
Affairs, Sicelo Shiceka, is devoting his energies to proving that the
City of Cape Town is cutting off people's water and not delivering
services.
Why is a national Minister targeting a municipality which is a model
of good governance and efficiency in comparison with most ANC run
local authorities? And why now?
For those who understand how the ANC works, the answer is obvious. The
whole affair gives me a distinct sense of déjà vu.
It was a strange synchronicity that in the very week that we closed
the final chapter of the Erasmus Commission, I received a letter from
Minister Shiceka requesting me to report to a newly established
Ministerial Task Team on Water Cut-offs, Electricity, Sanitation and
Housing in the City of Cape Town.
This is another unlawful political witch-hunt, make no mistake.
Like the Erasmus Commission, it involves the abuse of state resources
by the ANC for the purpose of smearing a DA-led government in the
run-up to an election.
Like the Erasmus Commission, it reveals the ANC's underlying
intolerance of democracy when it loses an election and its willingness
to ride roughshod over the Constitution to achieve its political
objectives.
And, like the Erasmus Commission, the Task Team is based on a flimsy
pretext. According to Minister Shiceka, in a letter he wrote to
Provincial Local Government Minister Anton Bredell, he decided to set
up the Task Team because of a single letter from a member of the
public with a water-related grievance. "This [letter] clearly
demonstrates the problem is bigger than we have discovered.
Consequently, I have decided to establish a Task Team comprising
representatives from the three spheres, that is National, Provincial
and Local Government," wrote Minister Shiceka.
The only other 'evidence' that Minister Shiceka has of water cut-offs
are from his visit to Cape Town last month when he discovered that
some people in Mitchells Plain were without running water. The fact
that it later emerged that this was the work of ANC activists has not
deterred him.
When I went to Mitchells Plain to investigate, people told me that ANC
activists had requested them to switch off their water at the
stop-cock before the Minister's visit. The people I spoke to were so
sure of their story that they were willing to make sworn affidavits to
this effect.
It is worth quoting one of the affidavits in full:
On Tuesday 29 September 2009 at about 09h15, I heard a person calling
on a loud hailer. I saw [name of ANC activist] and he was asking
people to come to a meeting and bring along their water accounts.
He then approached me and asked me if I can turn my water off at the
stop cork (sic) and when some one ask me about my water, I must say
that my water was disconnected.
I then told him that I am not interested because my water is only
R00.00 cents; I've only have to pay the connection fee of about
R420.00 and that I also receive about 350 litres a day free.
I also state that this is not the first time that he is calling for
the community to give them their water bills and to turn off their
water.
The ANC's willingness to engage in dirty tricks knows no bounds. But,
as with the Erasmus Commission, there are those who will argue that,
if the City has nothing to hide, it will welcome the opportunity to
'clear its name' by participating in the Task Team.
We refused to testify at the Erasmus Commission because it would have
given credence to a process designed to impugn a DA-led administration
for political purposes. Lies and distortions would have been presented
in the press daily as if they were fact. The ANC are masters of the
Goebbels school of propaganda: if you repeat a lie often enough, some
people may begin to believe it.
It is for this reason that neither the City nor the Province will take
part in the open session in Parliament arranged by the Task Team. Even
the Erasmus Commission attempted to present a veneer of legality by
appointing a judge to head it. The Task Team, by contrast, solely
comprises ANC deployees such as former MEC for Local Government and
Housing Richard Dyantyi (who played a key role in
driving the Erasmus Commission).
If Minister Shiceka was really concerned about the state of service
delivery in local government in general and Cape Town in particular,
he would appoint an independent body to undertake a service delivery
audit of every municipality in the country.
In fact this study has already been done. In a recent survey of 231
local municipalities, 46 district municipalities and six metropolitan
municipalities, independent economic empowerment rating agency
Empowerdex found that Cape Town was the best performer in terms of
housing, water, waste removal and sanitation delivery. And this is
despite the fact that there are 222 informal settlements,
mostly on invaded land -- primarily the result of thousands of
people fleeing the conditions in ANC governed provinces.
So why the obsession with Cape Town when it is obvious that the real
problems are elsewhere?
Why is the Task Team not investigating the death of eight people from
Mpheko village in the Eastern Cape after they drank tap water that had
been polluted with faecal matter due to the municipality's failure to
maintain the water treatment plant?
Why is the Task Team not investigating why sewage runs like a river
down the streets of Odendaalsrus in the Free State (as I witnessed
during the election campaign this year)?
Why is the Task Team not investigating the fact that Thokoza informal
settlement in Gauteng has only four water points for tens of thousands
of households?
The answer is that these things are happening in ANC-governed
provinces and municipalities, so they are being covered up. Meanwhile,
the DA is selectively targeted and smeared.
According to the legal advice we have received, the Task Team is
unlawful because it disregards the principles of co-operative
governance set out in the Constitution. I have today written to
Minister Shiceka requesting that we meet to resolve the matter, as
envisaged in the Intergovernmental Relations Act. I hope that we can
avoid an intergovernmental dispute. But, if necessary, I am willing to
fight this power abuse all the way to the constitutional court. The
ANC's abuse of power is the single greatest threat to our democracy,
in every context, and we have to take a stand to stop it.
Minister Shiceka has reportedly put the hearings on hold until he
receives legal advice on the matter. To assist, I would be quite happy
to furnish him with a copy of the Erasmus Commission Court Judgment.
After all, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
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