A shocking programme on Carte Blanche on Sunday night spelled out the disastrous state of our water treatment systems, with many of our rivers as bad as open sewers. Instances were shown of people becoming sick as a result of contact with river water.
In one case a swimmer in a lagoon had to have his leg amputated when a small cut on his foot became infected with a necrotic bacteria in the lagoon water, caused by raw sewage in the water. The worst affected areas appear to be KZN and – surprisingly – the Western Cape. Jaap Kelder of the NTU has been urging people to years to take control of malfunctioning sewage plants in their town to prevent exactly this state of affairs. The fact that it has become as bad as this, shows that people have not been aware of the poor state of their town’s sewage systems. For the sake of general health and the environment, it is vitally important that ratepayer’s associations take note of the functioning of their local sewage systems – the NTU has a water committee that can assist. Their details are on the website.
The government has admitted to a Water Affairs portfolio committee meeting in Parliament that they have for years failed to properly regulate municipal sewage works, which are now responsible for discharging untreated sewage into rivers and dams across the country. This admission came ahead of the Water Affairs Department release of the Green Drop report, which assessed 449 or the country’s 852 waste water treatment plants. It found that only 32% of them qualified for Green Drop status. One of the measures suggested to deal with this, was to replace the old management approach of incentives, which wasn’t working, with punitive measures against municipalities that did not comply.
South Africa’s lack of water supply is already impeding socio-economic development, says Business Leadership South Africa and the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE). The problems identified were: a lack of political leadership; weak water management; lack of maintenance of infrastructure; the impact of acid mine drainage (AMD) and uncontrolled waste of water.
In Kimberley, there are fears that sewage pollution of the Kamfer Dam, which is the breeding ground for the endemic Lesser Flamingo, will kill the birds, which breed here and no-one else. The Save the Flamingo association under Dr Jan Roos in Bloemfontein, is monitoring the situation.
The national government has reacted to many services delivery problems by proposing further centralization of services. In Tshwane, for instance, there is a proposal to extend the boundaries of the Metro to include outlying districts. In many municipalities, turn-around strategies include centralization. This is a recipe for disaster and must be opposed as vigorously as possible. Most municipalities cannot administer their existing areas, so to add more areas is simply going to slow the process down even further. RAs must keep an eye on these developments, and make it clear that this is not a solution. Some proposed plans will cripple municipalities even further: these include a centralization of electricity supply (which will redirect the surcharge that municipalities get from electricity); a centralization of traffic fines (which will deprive municipalities of income from fines); government-owned properties such as ports, airports and government buildings will not be subject to rates.
Mangaung Municipality’s budget makes provision for a 22% increase in across-the-board tariffs – 29% for electricity, 15% for water, 13% for rates. The budget will be tabled this week. The municipality is R1,3billion in debt.
Philipstown has brought a charge of fraud against their municipality and this was referred to the Commercial Crimes Unit in Kimberley. The municipality threatened to cut off the electricity of the disputers, but after they wrote a letter setting out the causes of their grievances the threat was withdrawn.
Residents of Knysna has been made aware that the entire rates component of their town budget will be used to pay salaries, and that services will have to come out of tariff surcharges. The residents might be aware that, according to law, salaries and wages cannot be more than 35% of a town’s budget. If it is, residents can reject the budget, call a dispute and withhold their rates.
Organisations across society – from Cosatu to Afriforum – are all warning that Eskom’s tariff increases will make electricity unaffordable for at least a further third of existing Eskom customers by 2014. This last week I had to recommend to a ratepayer that they sell their house as they can no longer afford the rates and service charges and have fallen into unrecoverable arrears. There is an irony here, though: municipalities write off millions of rands every year in unpaid rates, yet other people are losing their houses because of unaffordability. This points once again to a failure of government, as one of the key performance areas of municipalities is to recover rates. When a municipality writes off rates arrears, it is an admission that they are not doing their job. In Bloemfontein, the municipal debt is currently running at R1,3 billion because of the number of people moving into the municipal area from the rural areas in order to get free services. A further irony is where ratepayers are withholding rates and delivering services themselves at a fraction of the cost that the municipality does – this is proof, if proof were needed, that municipalities are wasting ratepayers money on a vast scale. The problem, therefore – as it seems to be with everything – is not a lack of money but a lack of effective government.
The chairman of the National Water Forum, Louis Meintjies, who is also the deputy president of TLU SA, laid criminal charges against three ministers last week. The Ministers of Water Affairs, Mining and Agriculture were charged with criminal negligence regarding water pollution which is impacting on national food security. The incident made international headlines. The charges were laid according to the Water Act of 1998, which makes provision for criminal charges if pollution through negligence can be proved. The charges include: pollution of the Kamfer Dam outside Kimberley; pollution of the Vaal River, pollution of the Hartebeespoort Dam, pollution of the Crocodile River; pollution of Biesies Vlei near Lichtenburg; pollution of the Blesbok stream; 34 other instances of pollution through official neglect. The ministers have not yet reacted to the charges.
Many people have enquired about starting a ratepayers association in their area and then joining the NTU. The process is as follows:
Start a local ratepayers association. A Constitution for RAs is on the website. Inform your local municipality that you have started a community-based organization. The Municipality has to acknowledge you in terms of the Municipal Systems Act 32/2000, Article 16 – 22.
Once your organization has been created, you can join the NTU. Contact Jaap Kelder at info@zanli.co.za to get the banking details and joining criteria.
Now you can start to create a paper trail for all your issues. Write letters to your municipality setting out all the problems in your area. Set deadlines for issues to be dealt with – make these deadlines realistic and do not accept the excuse that there is no money. It is advisable to attempt to meet with municipal officials regarding problems to make sure that you know who you are dealing with. These initial meetings might bear surprising success, and it will allow you to get the measure of the people in council. If the council will not meet with you, or cancels meetings, then you have strengthened your own case.
If the deadlines set out in your letters of complaint are not met, each member of your association should declare a dispute with the municipality. This is done on the basis of common law, regarding the non-fulfilment of contractual obligations, ‘exeptio contractus non adempleti’.
If there is still no action or reaction from the municipality, open a trust fund and put all rates and service charges into a trust account. Use people’s municipal account numbers as references on the account. At the end of every month, pay over the service charges to the municipality, while retaining the rates charges in the account. Notify the municipality of this action. You can, perhaps, in consultation with your members, arrange either to pay the service charges for lights and water through the trust account, or members must pay these individually. However, it is very important that these charges are paid otherwise services can be suspended and you will have lost the moral high ground and any chance of success.
If there is still no action or reaction from the municipality, you can begin to consider providing services yourself. This can either be done through buying materials and doing the work yourselves, or hiring contractors to do the work. Make sure that you keep a very good record of all work done and payments for this work. Services that can be provided in this regard are repairing equipment at the sewage works, fixing roads, pavements and potholes, street signs, dealing with infrastructure. This is done under the common law principle of ‘Negotiorum gestio’.
If there is still no action or reaction from the municipality, you can apply to become an external service provider in terms of Sections 76 – 86 or the Municipal Systems Act 32/2000.
No action is allowed to be taken against a rates disputer in terms of the Municipal Systems Act 32/2000, Section 102 (2).
In terms of Section 139 of the Constitution, a provincial government must intervene if a municipality is not being effectively run. There must be some empirical evidence of this, such as collapse of services, a rejected budget, qualified audit report, evidence of fraud or corruption, etc. There are two ways in which province can intervene: in terms of section 139(1)(b) where the council remains in place and the administration is taken over by an outside administrator appointed by the MEC for Local Government; or in terms of section 139(4) where the council must be suspended and the administrator takes over completely. If provincial intervention is not successful, National Government must intervene. As ratepayers therefore, you can do the following: if you have followed the dispute mechanism to its conclusion, you at least have the knowledge that your ratepayers money is not going to disappear but at least has been kept in a trust account. Decide which of the sections of the Constitution are most relevant for your purposes. Notify the MEC for Local Government of any instances that might require intervention. If there is intervention, monitor it closely and if there is no visible improvement, notify the national minister and request intervention. In the meantime, your rates have been kept in a trust account so there will be funds to keep the municipality going while the mess is being sorted out.
A further recommendation is to prevent re-deployment, which is a favourite trick of the ANC. Officials get fired from one municipality (or they resign one step ahead of an investigation) and then pop up in another high-paying job somewhere else. If you have knowledge of any official in your municipality who has resigned ahead of an investigation, who has been suspended or fired, let me know those names. We will compile a list. It will be instructive to see if these people get jobs elsewhere.
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Tags: Ratepayers