Hammanskraal should be declared a disaster area

President Cyril Ramaphosa wants to stop people dying in Ukraine and will head an African peace initiative to end the war, which began after Russia invaded that country last year.

Closer to home, though, he doesn’t seem that fussed about South Africans dying. It beggars belief that, this far into the 21st century, in a supposedly urbanised area like Hammanskraal outside Pretoria, people should be dying of cholera.

This disease is caused either by food or water contaminated with E.coli bacteria, which come from faecal matter. It should not happen in a country, or a community, where the government administration supplies the water.

Watch: Hammanskraal residents chase Tshwane mayor away over cholera outbreak

But Hammanskraal – and indeed many parts of Greater Tshwane – have had to deal with bad water for years.

Earlier this month, The Citizen visited the community and found desperate people sinking boreholes because they could not trust the water coming out of their taps. It stank and contained strange particles.

Who is at fault – the Tshwane municipal authorities, or the national department of water affairs and sanitation – is the subject of some legal action. What is obvious is that our system of government, whether at municipal, provincial or national level, is failing the people of Hammanskraal.

And, let’s not make to fine a point about this: that failure amounts, legally speaking, to culpable homicide, because polluted water is entirely preventable.

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Even now, as tankers distribute water to the community, residents are still being advised not to use any water from their taps.

How is this anything like the better life for all promised by the ANC? How is this anything like the effective municipalities the DA boasts about? Let’s not forget these problems were evident when the DA ran Pretoria.

Hammanskraal should be declared a disaster area and action must be initiated immediately.

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