Mafikeng is the capital city of the North West — but it sure doesn’t look like it. Even after administrators were brought in to run the city, Mafikeng is still performing poorly.
A visit by the Mail & Guardian to the Mafikeng and Moses Kotane municipalities indicated the R80-million spent by Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka on administrators he sent to sort out North West in 2009 has yielded few visible results. The administrators were expected to take over the running of several dysfunctional municipalities, including Moses Kotane and Mafikeng.
The situation in Mafikeng has deteriorated even further. Roads are in a state of disrepair, some new low-cost housing developments have neither electricity nor roads and both residents and government officials admit the municipality is an embarrassment.
“Who is happy at this stage? We keep voting, but vote for what?” asked Adam Mahomed, a resident of Montshiwa township since the late 1960s. The road in front of Mahomed’s house is a bed of potholes. “I have to replace the shocks every time because of these potholes. We are being promised things that do not materialise.”
Municipal mayor Desmond Jabanyane believes the municipality is learning from its mistakes. “Sometimes, to change something you need to see it failing so that you can know what’s wrong,” he said.
But the question remains: why, 17 years after democracy, can Mafikeng not get it right? Jabanyane said the municipality was owed millions by various government departments, businesses and residents. “The total debt we had last year was around R500-million. We were providing services but not getting anything from consumers,” he said.
Meanwhile, just outside the province’s economic hub of Rustenburg in the Moses Kotane municipality, three out of four residents the M&G spoke to were happy with service delivery.
Eunice Olyn, a street vendor from Mabele-a-Podi next to Mogwase township, received a tap in her yard and a prepaid electricity meter from the municipality four years ago.
“My brother and my two daughters have got RDP houses in Zone 8 with two bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen and a bathroom,” she said. But local governance is being complicated by traditional leadership squabbles, according to Titus Makgatha, a former member of the Bakubung-ba-Ratheo traditional council.
Ledig, a village in the Moses Kotane municipality, is suffering because of the coexistence of traditional leaders and the municipal council. Parts of Ledig are steeped in poverty, with a lack of water and housing among the most pressing needs. The community relies on communal water tanks provided by mining company Wesizwe Platinum. Resident Jabulile Ndlovu said: “We have given up on the water after many meetings that have resulted in nothing.”
Ndlovu does not get the free electricity she is meant to as an indigent person and was told she doesn’t need a house because her one-room shack “looks too good”. She blamed local leaders for delivering services and RDP houses only to their supporters.
Makgatha agreed: “These houses were built to appease the residents because the villagers were fighting against the traditional council, which is mainly led by local ANC leaders. They were built for selected people who are council supporters. That’s why the houses are so few.”
Outgoing mayor Peter Molelekeng said water provision, the biggest problem for most of the municipality’s 107 villages, would be resolved if the country stopped selling water from the Molatedi Dam to Botswana.