RAPULA MOATSHE
Political parties in Tshwane have taken a swipe at the multiparty government under DA mayor Cilliers Brink in the wake of the public protector report that found that the municipality must shoulder the blame for providing Hammanskraal residents with dirty water.
The ANC said it was exonerated by the report after the party’s advice to the DA administration to approach the national government for assistance fell on deaf ears.
Party council caucus spokesperson Joel Masilela said former mayor Solly Msimanga refused to take heed of the ANC’s advice that “the municipality doesn’t have the capacity to resolve the Rooiwal issue”.
“The problem that we had is that the government was arrogant and believed that it would raise over R4 billion to complete the Rooiwal water project. We have always said the city would not have the entire amount required to resolve the problem in five years,” he said.
He said the ANC’s view had always been that the city ought to speak to the national Department of Water and Sanitation in dealing with problems at the Rooiwal plant.
He said the ANC welcomed Brink’s stance that the municipality “is now working closely with Minister of Water and Sanitation Senzo Mchunu” in an effort to upgrade the capacity of the plant.
Masilela said: “We are happy that finally we are vindicated as the ANC because the PP report speaks of the failure of the current administration.
“During our tenure as the ANC we were able to purify the water in Hammanskraal and reduce the acidity level and make sure that Magalies Water and many other water authorities are able to keep up with the demands in terms of the blue drop water status.”
National chairperson Tlhogi Moseki of The Transformation Alliance (TTA) also said the party was vindicated by the PP report released this week stating that Tshwane failed to supply Hammanskraal residents with clean water.
Moseki said: “On Tuesday, October 24, 2023, TTA lodged a complaint with the public protector, against the City of Tshwane Municipality following an admission by the City’s councillor that it was indeed the municipality’s fault that 29 people in Hammanskraal died due to a cholera outbreak early this year. This investigation is still ongoing.”
He also suggested that the City reduced the number of water trucks delivering clean water to Hammanskraal to three times a week.
“This caused the community of Hammanskraal, out of desperation, to use the tap water that was declared unfit for human consumption by the South African Human Rights Council,” he said.
Brink said the City has already undertaken to upgrade the capacity of the Rooiwal plant in partnership with the Department of Water and Sanitation.
The City, he said, had allocated R450 million towards upgrading the Rooiwal plant over a three-year period.
Brink said if the plant had been upgraded in the first decade of this century, as the City’s master plan recommended in 2004 under the former ANC administration, “then enormous expense and suffering might have been avoided”.
For many years the plant has come under criticism for being the source of dirty water consumed by people in Hammanskraal due to its lack of capacity to purify waste water, resulting in the sludge being discharged into the Apies River.
The Apies River, in turn, supplied water to the Temba water treatment plant, used for purifying water for the Hammanskraal residents.
Pretoria News