Focus on Bushbuckridge Local Municipality

Mayor Sylvia Nxumalo reflects on successes

BUSHBUCKRIDGE – On August 9, 2016, the ANC in the province announced that it had deployed Cllr Sylvia Nxumalo to take over reigns as the Bushbuckridge Local Municipality’s executive mayor. At this ever growing local municipality, which borders the famous Kruger National Park, Nxumalo has never looked back. She has proved to be a force to be reckoned with. When she ascended to the top seat, many political pundits and opponents, especially from political organisations such as the now defunct Bushbuckridge Ratepayers Association (BRA), said she will collapse the municipality and will not last as mayor.

Almost five years after she was deployed, Nxumalo’s administration has performed remarkably well in improving the standard of living of the people of this municipality. A number of governmental projects were successfully completed and delivered.

Under her leadership, the municipality created a friendly environment for the private sector flourish, which paved way for a number of shopping centres such as the Dwarsloop Mall and the Acornhoek Mall. These shopping centres have in turn created much needed employment opportunities for many local residents.

Mpumalanga News recently caught up with Nxumalo and briefly spoke about some of the municipality’s milestones and setbacks.

“Our mandate was very clear when we took over. We just wanted to speed up the service delivery vehicle. It’s not that there were problems with the service delivery machinery, but we felt we could speed it up for our people to benefit from our services such as the provision of water, better roads and electricity, just to mention a few,” she said. “I am happy that looking back from where we came from we were able to achieve desired results, guided by the ANC’s mandates and policies and by the municipal’s Integrated Development Plans. We listened to our people’s needs and delivered programmes and projects based on their needs,” continued Nxumalo.

During her term, a number of projects such as street paving, ring roads and water were delivered to the different communities of the municipality. With South Africa being a water scarce country, Nxumalo said this fact hinders their attempts to provide clean running water for a number of communities.

“Taps are dry because rivers, streams and dams are running dry as well, but we try as a municipality to provide water using water tankers. The other challenge we face is the ever mushrooming of new settlements which require us to also include in our already over-stretched budget,” she said.

She joked saying that if she had more time she would do more for communities within the municipality. “…But our time is almost up. I can only wish and pray that the ANC retains power so that it can continue working and delivering basic services for the people,” she concluded.

BLM celebrates Women’s Month with needy learners

BUSHBUCKRIDGE – As part of celebrating Women’s Month, the Bushbuckridge Local Municipality (BLM) executive mayor, Cllr Sylvia Nxumalo, ran a school shoe campaign. She donated over 200 pairs of shoes to schoolgirls.

Carefully targeting impoverished schools within the Marite area, Nxumalo teamed up with one of the fastest growing security companies within the BLM, Makungu Security Services. Together they brought smiles to the little faces of over 200 learners from different primary schools.

“We actually wanted to focus on the girl child, but then we realised the need to actually include every learner in need. The reality that we cannot run away from is that most of these learners come from disadvantaged family backgrounds and therefore we can’t say we are only focusing on girls,” said Nxumalo.

She said shoes give back confidence to learners and that no learner should come to school without proper school shoes. Nxumalo continued saying that the recent statistics have shown that since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic most people have lost their jobs and schoolchildren dropped out of schools for various reasons.

“A need arises for us to come to the space and encourage these children to continue coming to school because education is the key to a brighter tomorrow. This is one of the many reasons why we decided to donate these shoes to primary school learners, so we can encourage them not to drop out of school. We can only hope that these school shoes will give them that extra edge to come to school and build a future for themselves,” continued Nxumalo.

“We will continue partnering with the business sector to ensure that we reach out to as many school learners as we can. We just want to play our part in ensuring that these children never drop out of school,” Nxumalo stressed.

During the donation, the Makungu Security Services director, Mandla Matsane said, “We are not here because we have too much money. We are just concerned about our children’s education and their future. As a security company, we are happy to make a difference. We wish we had more so we could give more. But this is not the end, we will come back and touch many other children across this municipality and beyond”.

Council condemns fraudulent selling of stands on farm

BUSHBUCKRIDGE – The Bushbuckridge Local Municipality has condemned the illegal and fraudulent sale of sites at the Dwarsloop 248 KU. The council’s acting spokesperson, Claiton Khosa, said it has come to the municipality’s attention that there is an organisation called Dwarsloop Youth Forum which has issued application forms inviting people to buy stands or sites on this piece of land.

“The municipality wishes to distance itself from such an illegal and fraudulent exercise and urges the community of Dwarsloop, surrounding areas and beyond to refrain from such calls,” appealed Khosa.
Information received suggested that the sites are being sold from R5 350. “The municipality will be opening a case with the Bushbuckridge SAPS against the alleged organisation for fraudulently attempting to sell stands on this farm. The municipality would also like to warn members of the community to be vigilant and not fall victim to the scam. “The municipality has a good working relationship with all traditional authorities within its area of jurisdiction and follows legal routes (Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act, and municipal by-laws) when demarcating sites. It is against this background that the municipality is calling upon its communities to be aware of such a scam and to report any form of corruption to the SAPS,” advised Khosa.