ANC cadres have destroyed services

Residents of Kgetlengrivier in the North West – an area which includes the towns of Koster, Derby and Swartruggens – have had enough of the atrocious service delivery from their ANC local government … and now they want the municipal manager locked up because of it.

Back in 2020, the Kgetlengrivier Concerned Residents Association won a landmark court order which allowed them to take over control of the area’s water and sewage systems. This was done after the court gave the municipal manager, Joseph Mogale, 10 weeks to fix the systems, failing which he would be jailed for six months.

The residents are now going through the courts system to enforce the imprisonment of Mogale. That’s because, after they spent R17 million of their own money to fix things, another court order returned the systems to the municipality…with the result that the taps are often dry and sewerage flows into streets and rivers.

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Although the North West government reimbursed residents for what they had spent, the collapse backwards shows, in a nutshell, what is wrong with our municipal system today: Incompetent cadres deployed by the ANC have destroyed functioning services.

In the latest action, another court agreed with the municipality that the original order had lapsed – but the residents are fighting on with an appeal. And we wish them the best of luck. How on earth Mogale is still in his job beggars belief – as does how the thick-skinned ANC can allow this sort of behaviour to continue around the country, from big metros to small platteland dorpies.

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Even when voters get the chance to get rid of parasite ANC councils, the ruling party’s new survival ploy is to gang up with minor parties to disrupt or destroy coalitions. A party which would rather have chaos than the order brought about by its rivals, is sick.