Nomvula Mazibuko sobs uncontrollably each time she has to narrate her experience of enduring the flooding of her house every time it has rained over the past 22 years.
There is no office of the City of Johannesburg that she has not been to, including the City’s Johannesburg Water and Johannesburg Roads Agency, to tell them of her predicament and nobody has seemed to have found a solution to her nightmare.
She has asked many ward councillors for help but to no avail. “All the four councillors, who each served two terms at the helm of the ward, never did anything except for current councillor Tefo Raphadu, who came and built a kerb to try and stop the rainwater but as soon as it builds up, it [flows over] the kerb and floods the house once again,” she said.
Mazibuko, of Phil Machitela Street in Extension 8 in the Far East Bank section of Alexandra, claimed to have also visited the City’s Region E offices in Sandton on numerous occasions to ask for help.
“No one listened to me but instead I was given the run-around, sent from pillar to post and office to office, including entity to entity of the City with no help,” she told Alex News in an interview.
Mazibuko runs a crèche on the property, Enjabulweni Nursery School, and she claimed the gate to the school had been damaged by the flooding water more than three times and a section of her garage wall had collapsed at one stage.
“At one time when the rains were heavy, the floodwaters filled the house close to two metres high and I and my husband found our car afloat as if it was hanging from the garage roof. How long must I suffer like this and nobody cares. Please save me from this nightmare,” she pleaded.
When contacted, Region E promised to come back to Alex News with a solution and immediately dispatched its officials to Mazibuko’s house for a ‘horses mouth’ report. The Johannesburg Roads Agency also promised to send its engineers to Mazibuko to determine what they said would be ‘a lasting solution’ for her.
