By Akani Nkuna
The City of Tshwane has been plagued by service delivery issues for years. Also, in the last three years, it has had four mayors with ActionSA’s Nasiphi Moya taking over the reins in October.
This followed a motion of no confidence submitted by the African National Congress more than a month ago, which saw the Democratic Alliance’s Cilliers Brink being ousted as mayor.
Despite the ANC now occupying five MMC positions and the deputy mayor position, the party’s secretary-general Fikile Mbalula led a march to Tshwane House on Friday, where he handed over a memorandum of demands listing 17 issues the party wants the metro to address.
“We, the people of Tshwane, marched last year [to] present our demands to the previous DA-led government in the city. Our demands were not met. We are here to restate our demands to the newly elected mayor and her new mayoral team,” the document reads.
It lists rooting out corruption, promoting employment, formalising informal settlements, providing clean water, providing service delivery and essential services, and empowering the township economy.
ANC regional secretary George Matjila told reporters “this is not a protest”.
“It is a walk with the people. It is something that we thought it is important to do. These are the very same people who assisted in ensuring that we dethrone the DA-led coalition because there were no services.
“As we move forward, it is important that we walk with the people, go and place at the centre of that municipality the challenges of our people,” he said.
Parties that ousted Brink accused him of uneven service delivery, prioritising affluent areas over disadvantaged communities.
Moya, who was Brink’s deputy, received the “people’s mandate” from the ANC.
She reassured thousands of protesters outside Tshwane House that the municipality was ready to serve its citizens, regardless of their ethnicity or political affiliation.
“All residents of the city are equal to us. It could be another colour, we will accept the mandate [delivered here today],” she said.
Mbalula told the gathering that the ANC was committed to putting people first.
The march aimed to unite and mobilise communities across the city, ensuring that Tshwane worked for all its residents, not just a select few.
“Make Tshwane work. Make our townships… be where they were before. Bring all the EPWP (Expanded Public Works Programme) on board in terms of [the] Tshwane programme and show that our townships are well serviced by our government,” he said.
Reacting to the march, Brink said in a statement that the problems confronting Tshwane had deteriorated since his departure from office, while the ANC was “marching on itself”.
“As Tshwane’s water situation has worsened, the city’s ANC-led coalition has been missing in action. Several communities in the city have now been without water for days on end,” he said.
Once appointed to government office, “you stop marching and start working,” Brink said.
While admitting that the water crisis in Tshwane and the rest of the province could not be solved overnight, he said that under his leadership the metro worked with the National Treasury to devise and adopt a water turnaround strategy.
If implemented, this strategy would reduce water losses in the medium term, he claimed.
“The ANC and their coalition partners have made big promises to improve service delivery in townships, but the reality is that they’ve underestimated the task of government, and now things are only getting worse.”
Just some of the service delivery issues in Tshwane include water shortages, power outages, waste collection disruptions, a lack of security, housing backlogs and poor sanitation.
At the end of October, Moya announced a 100-day service delivery plan focusing on six priority areas, which has been publicly supported by parties governing the metro.
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