Rubbish is scattered around Blydeville in Lichtenburg, with a resident saying that she has not seen a refuse collector for years. Photo: Lunga Mzangwe
Waking up to sewage in your home, no water for 21 hours a day, rubbish that has not been collected for more than 10 years, walking on “tarred” roads that look more like gravel ones and having to abandon your house and live in a shack because you cannot bear the smell anymore.
This is the reality for many of the residents of Blydeville in Lichtenburg caused by the failure of the Ditsobotla local municipality in the North West — and the 29 May general elections have given them no reason to be optimistic.
Nick Kubelo, a tavern owner whose house has been dubbed “ko masepeng” or “shit house” because of continuous sewage spills, says he has been raising the issue with the municipality for the past 10 years without luck.
“This pains me so much … I was recently called to the school because my children are being labelled as people who stay ‘ko masepeng’. This smell is not good for my children, if it was only me, it would be better,” he told the Mail & Guardian.
Every day at 4pm, Kubelo has to open a manhole near his house because if he doesn’t, the sewage spills into his house through the toilet.
“People come back from work and use a lot of water and that’s when it becomes bad. Now I’m forced to walk in the sewer and open it so that it can flow in different directions from my house and it’s also dangerous because children can fall into the manhole.”
Kubelo once filled buckets with the sewage and threw their contents inside the council office to vent his frustrations, but the municipality continued to ignore him.
“Even after this incident they still didn’t come. I have told myself that after the elections, I will go and throw the bucket of sewage in the municipality again. I am ready to be arrested and face a magistrate to tell him of the pain my children face every day,” he said.
But despite all these problems, Kubelo will still vote for the governing ANC on 29 May.
“To be honest, I would not have this tavern if it wasn’t for the ANC, but unfortunately the ANC now only remembers people during campaigning season,” he said.
Tshepo Lekanyane, whose family has had to drill holes inside their house to allow the sewage to drain out, is also frustrated. The house next to his is uninhabited, after his neighbours abandoned it because of the unhealthy conditions.
“They decided to go and build a shack somewhere because they could not take it anymore. We are not even worried about the [other] services anymore, if they can only fix the sewer issues. We have been living like this for the past six or seven years,” Lekanyane said.
Another resident, Boitumelo Dyers, complained about uncollected rubbish, electricity outages and the poor condition of the roads. She has not seen a rubbish collector in the area for the past 10 years and water only runs in the taps from 7am to 9am.
“It’s also a sometimes thing because sometimes there’s no water at all and there’s no explanation. When you don’t have water, you can’t even go to the toilet.
“We are also forced to create our own dumping sites. It has been more than 10 years since we saw a municipal truck passing here, we only see them in town.”
Dyers said many residents believed that voting was a useless exercise and they would give it a miss, but she would definitely cast her ballot.
Mayor Thabo Nkashe said the department of environmental services had temporarily suspended household waste collection in the entire municipality and all the trucks were grounded because of mechanical problems.
He said the municipality was in a dire financial situation, which hampered its ability to render some of the services under its mandate.
“Our roads are in a terrible state. We are currently unable to maintain our roads due to cash flow problems and budgetary constraints within the municipality. However, we are working around the clock to turn around the financial position of the municipality to ensure that we attend to service delivery backlogs.”
In 2022, the national department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs placed the Ditsobotla municipality under administration after warring ANC factions led to a collapse of services.
For most of that year, the municipality had two mayors, two council speakers and two municipal managers occupying the posts at the same time.
Ditsobotla received an adverse report from the auditor general for the 2022-23 financial year, which found that the municipality did not have “adequate systems to correctly record and classify expenditure”.
It highlighted more than R14.7 billion in unauthorised and irregular expenditure, up from R9.6 billion from the previous year. The auditor general said unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure were not investigated to determine whether any person was liable for the poor financial management.
“The performance management system and related control was not maintained and it did not adequately describe how the performance measurements, review and reporting processes should be managed,” it added.
An open sewer and disconnected pipe in Ditsobotla. Photo: Lunga Mzangwe
Former mayor Boitumelo Lethoko told the North West standing committee on provincial public accounts in May last year that the balance in the municipal bank account was zero and that the situation was so dire that the municipality could not even buy toilet paper.
The ANC infighting in the municipality is a reflection of divisions in the wider province dating back to the reign of former premier and ANC provincial chair Supra Mahumapelo, who was accused of running parallel ANC structures and was later removed along with the entire provincial executive committee. A provincial task team led by Job Mokgoro fared no better.
During a visit to Ngaka Modiri Molema region, which includes Ditsobotla, in May last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa warned ANC branches that the party would lose the elections if the factions, divisions and infighting continued. He said it was concerning that he was leading an organisation that was not united when it faced its most difficult election.
“If we go to 2024 with this disunity, which I see here, I can promise you we are not going to be successful. If you want to lose the election, then you must proceed with this disunity I am seeing here,” he said.
“It does not mean in the ANC we have to work with the people we like, we have to work with people who we do not like because what unites us is the ANC.”
Ramaphosa’s remarks came nine months after Nono Maloi had won the provincial chair. He was told that the ANC councillors carried knives in council and stabbed each other over positions. Party members in the province accused Maloyi of fuelling the divisions and purging his opponents.
The party lost control of the Ditsobotla municipality in December 2021 by-elections, with its support dropping from 51% to 39%. This resulted in a hung municipality, forcing the ANC to form a coalition with smaller parties.
The ANC’s support in North West fell to 61.87% of the votes in the 2019 general elections, from 67.39% in 2014 of the vote.
An ANC councillor in Ditsobotla who spoke to the M&G this week on condition of anonymity admitted that the people in the region, especially in Ditsobotla, were losing faith in the governing party and might boycott the coming election.
“We can see how these divisions among us are affecting the community. We are already in a coalition and people obviously still believe the ANC is in charge. I was in the meeting when the president said we might lose the province if we continue with the infightings. There’s hope now with the provincial government intervening,” he said.
Driving through the town, the election posters were those of Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), ActionSA, uMkhonto weSizwe, Democratic Alliance, South African Rainbow Alliance and Freedom Front Plus. ANC posters were nowhere to be seen.
Community leader Tshepiso Goeieman said he had also not seen the ANC campaigning in the region or in North West, adding: “I just know that only next week they will be going to Moruleng Stadium to campaign next week Saturday.”
Goeieman predicted that the ANC would lose its majority in the province, saying the EFF and Forum 4 Service Delivery would give the ruling party a run for its money.
Ditsobotla remains under administration in terms of the Municipal Financial Management Act. The North West government has been unable to restore good governance, the delivery of services and the financial health of the municipality and the residents have borne the brunt of the municipality’s failures.
Goeieman said it was time for the national government to take over Ditsobotla because the provincial government had failed.
Speaking on the sidelines of an ANC briefing on international relations last week, national executive committee member Obed Bapela agreed with residents’ assertion that the factions in the party were part of the reason for the deterioration in the municipality.
“Even when we were there, you’d think you’ve resolved the issues and one comrade will go out and do something differently,” Bapela said.
“We did disband the municipality thinking we are resolving the issues and removing those who were troublemakers and brought in new people but still the problem continues. It’s an embedded issue and I don’t know what other remedies need to be applied.”
The DA’s acting provincial director in North West, CJ Steyl, said Ditsobotla municipality existed only on paper because all basic services had collapsed, including water supply, sanitation, refuse collection, roads maintenance, electricity as well as billings to households for utilities, rates and taxes.
He backed residents’ claims that they had to buy things such as meter boxes, and that residents and businesses had to work together to fix problems that should be the responsibility of the council. “The municipality has become entitled to this kind of assistance from businesses and residents when they are already paying,” Steyl said.
“Ditsobotla has been placed under provincial administration for the last 20 years and there has been no improvement in any provincial government intervention in the municipality.”
He cited cadre deployment and nepotism as some of the reasons for the rot in Ditsobotla.
“There are 752 employees and more than 500 of them are direct family members or relatives of municipal officials in the administration or elected public representatives of the ANC. So when you have ANC factional battles with a politicised administration of 500 employees with some sort of link to ANC politicians, it impacts on the administration of the municipality,” he said.
“They will abuse their official positions if the request comes from one ANC which they are not part of. As things are, Ditsobotla will remain as is — I don’t know if it can collapse even further,” Steyl said.
In October last year, the DA wrote to Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Thembi Nkadimeng and Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana, asking them to place the municipality under administration, which would allow the national treasury to intervene and take full control over its financial management. But Steyl said despite his party continuously writing to both ministers, they had not considered this proposal.