Residents in west of Pretoria fed up as claims of lack of service delivery hang

Residents gathered at the Atteridgeville community hall on Friday, April 5 to air their grievances over the lack of service delivery in their communities.

The meet was organised by the Lotus Gardens, Atteridgeville and Saulsville Civic Association (Lasca), and representatives of the organisation from every region in the metro were present.

Residents from townships such as Soshanguve, Mabopane, Mamelodi, Danville, Ga-Rankuwa, Lotus Gardens, Saulsville and Atteridgeville were all in attendance.

The purpose of the mass community meeting was to receive feedback on the two memoranda of demands hand-delivered to the metro at Tshwane House on November 10, 2023 and January 24.

Demands listed in the memoranda included:

– scrapping of dump sites in favour of skip bins
– hiring of meter readers
– installation of smart meters
– fast-tracking the indigent policy approval from six months to three
– cancellation of debt collector contracts with immediate effect
– prepaid meters to be installed in informal settlements and hostels
– by-law enforcement at local spaza shops, among many others.

Lasca had invited mayor Cilliers Brink, his deputy Nashipi Moya and city manager Johan Mettler to the meeting but the metro was a no-show.

Lasca chairperson Tshepo Mahlangu did not hold back expressing his discontentment at the executives’ decision to not attend.

“It’s very funny that when they’re doing their Tshwane Ya Tima, they bring their cameras, metro police and all sorts, but when we call them to come to address the people directly, they are nowhere to be seen,” he said.

Mahlangu took aim at the coalition government over a litany of issues including allegations of corruption, maladministration and mishandling of finances. He encouraged the packed hall to not make any arrangements with the metro regarding debt payment.

“We are not inciting any violence or telling our people to assault City of Tshwane workers, we are saying don’t negotiate with fraudsters. We discourage Tshwane residents from making payment arrangements on imposed erroneous bills until our bills are written off,” he said.

Residents say that the water and electricity bills they receive are too high and that they have no way of affording them, even if a payment plan could be made. Common consensus was the metro is using the poor to settle its own debt.

One elderly Atteridgeville resident Mariam Sizane said she takes care of her two brothers who are pensioners and suffer from health complications that have resulted in memory loss

“When I went to the Eskom offices, they said that the houses owe R15 000 and I should first pay R6 000. I tried telling them these guys are pensioners who get R2 000 each from Sassa and I pay on their behalf. Since we haven’t been able to come up with the money they’ve been living for the past two months without electricity and eating bread only,” she said.

Sizane said they tried applying for the indigent programme in January and were told the process can take three-six months.

Another elderly resident from Soshanguve, Elmond Nkosi says that during a three-week strike last year, elderly residents signed payment agreements with the Soshanguve municipal office. Nkosi implored Lasca to help them get out of those arrangements as he claimed they did not know what they were signing.

“I want to ask Lasca to help our elderly as we can’t afford these payment arrangements, these are grandmothers and fathers that don’t work,” Nkosi said.

Lasca says that it will be taking cases to the Human Rights Commission and the Office of the Public Protector and still is not ruling out a possible future protest.

“The mayor and finance MMC never made efforts to address concerns raised by the residents but they are now all over media and TikTok platforms gloating about their tyrant approach,” Mahlangu said.

“Tshwane Ya Tima won’t yield any desirable results and they won’t collect revenue through this notorious campaign aimed or designed to loot the residents of Tshwane, especially townships. They easily forget that township customers contribute almost 80% of the city’s revenue.”

The residents say the metro has since acknowledged receipt of their memoranda.

In response the metro has warned residents not to obey Mahlangu’s call, reminding locals their contract is with the metro and not the Lasca chairperson.

“We would like to caution the community that they have a contract with the city for the provision of services and not with Tshepo Mahlangu, whose actions border on criminality,” said metro spokesman Selby Bokaba.

Bokaba also said that no calls to boycott paying for services will stop the metro from conducting credit control.

“Mahlangu has no authority to instruct residents not to pay for the services they consumed and cannot stop the metro from enforcing credit control. The community should be wary of Mahlangu,” he said.

Bokaba urged residents to pay for services and approach the city to make an arrangement should they be unable to.

He said Mahlangu had made similar utterances on January 4.

For that, the metro had accused Mahlangu of being an attention-seeker and Lasca representatives of preventing and harassing meter readers in areas, which led to it estimating invoices to residents.

The metro said the free services it offered to the poor and indigent residents was above the national average.

– water – 6kl (National) 12kl (Tshwane)

– electricity 50kw (National) 100kw (Tshwane)

– refuse removal is 100% free and

– all owners of property valued at less than R150 000 don’t pay rates.

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