Sam Nape writes
You will not have an informed interrogation with anyone who knows very little of Highveld Steel & Vanadium or even heard of Vanchem or Highveld Coca-Cola, Rand Carbide, Cyanamid, McCarthy Mining, Ferrometals or Neville Matthews.
These were economic giants that shaped and moulded eMalahleni and its entire community. Beaming with a smile as a business hub.
Unfortunately, 2020 outlook moves eMalahleni into a metro squatter camp, far from an industrial area.
If you know where you come from, you’ll know where you are heading to.
Unpredictability demands a revisit to a metamorphosis of Witbank into eMalahleni.
The demise of these world class industries tells us that January 2002 and January 2020 are miles apart, it is like moving from Sandton to settle in Doornkop.
2006 assured us that the soil turning at Kusile Power Station by the then Mpumalanga Premier Makwetla was to sustain and turnaround the economy of eMalahleni and create SMME millionaires and local major construction companies.
Unfortunately, the result is the opposite, an ever hungry businessman with dry lips who shares the platform with the unemployed.
Fourteen years now in the construction of the giant Kusile, the local eMalahleni community has contributed to less than 20%.
Instead by 2024 on its anticipated completion eMalahleni will not pride itself as having a meaningful contribution to qualify as beneficiaries on long term job opportunities.
A damning report of the Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane on Kusile Power Station will reveal empowerment to the local few who slashed out millions into their pockets whilst the power station is heading to its completion before 2024.
Transfer from major contractors after five years 2030 into the hands of the local eMalahleni skill will meet a challenge of the fourth industrial revolution, by then unemployment will be staggering to 40%.
Who is going to maintain Kusile in the next 60 years after 2030 or sustain the municipality?
Contracted local busses, coasters, mini busses and mini taxis are now hovering into greater eMalahleni to survive on the little they can share with local established taxi businesses.
A scramble to share with economically distressed and closing down businesses.
The future of the taxi industry and the taxi driver unemployment rate is worrying and hope drawing boards are set to plan the next five years without loss of life.
Small construction companies packing up and coming back home, will find a saturated Eskom business and mining sector scratching for cramps of bread.
The B&B sit with dusty dining tables.
Rental properties worry over the room windows they clean without occupancy.
Street vendors are mushrooming to get rid of their stocks.
Down town is teaming up with cheap stuff vendors who have left out the banner “SALES” hanging up in the last 12 months.
Matriculants wonder if there will be anything termed greener pastures.
Unleashed by tertiary schools enlisting in the job market whilst eMalahleni can only pride itself of less than 30% and the 70% being students from outside eMalahleni in all our local tertiary colleges and TUT.
Job losses in 2020 is a reality and inevitable.
When the whole South Africa sneezes, eMalahleni catches the flu.
The 2021 municipal elections will soon reverberate with campaigns for seats in our municipal chambers.
Will someone guarantee my candidature for a seat if my manifesto is to get councillors join the working class and the poor of the poorest to demand a leaving wage of R3 500 per month as a councillor?
This informs us that rate payers are not treated differently at the corner shop for a loaf of bread or service charges by the municipal accounts departments?
Service delivery depends on the quality of leadership we put forward. Frustrated and corrupt leadership will lead a frustrated and corrupt community.
eMalahleni, vote wisely.
Councillors remain innocent unemployed and unemployable job seekers who are lucky to cash the gravy train.
