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Makana and Amahlati Local Municipalities must be dissolved

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Dear MyPE

The recent deployment of Eastern Cape Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) provincial administrators to Makana and Amahlathi Local Municipalities will not fix the ANC’s internal political issues – issues that are the root cause of service delivery failure.

These two municipalities are indicative of the rift that divides the ANC, and as a result, is bringing service delivery to a grinding halt.

Amahlathi is hotbed of maladministration, service delivery protests, and infighting. It is a fight that is a hangover from the ANC’s national conference in late 2017, between the “Zuma” camp and the “Ramaphosa” camp. But it doesn’t really matter who is in charge of the ANC, because it is the same cadres and cronies who are calling the shots inside the organization and continuing to cover up corruption and mismanagement.

Makana’s most urgent service delivery crisis is the quality and availability of water. Apart from a lack of communication or urgency in dealing with the water crisis in the municipality, the city of Makhanda is falling apart. Road maintenance and refuse collection are practically non-existent, and the council is, as in Amahlati, caught up in internal ANC squabbles.

The DA has been demanding an intervention in these, and other dysfunctional municipalities, for months. Fikile Xasa, MEC for COGTA, should dissolved these councils, in terms of section 139(1)(c) of the Constitution of South Africa. Fresh elections should be held to give the residents of the affected municipalities a chance to elect councillors who will represent them, rather than their own factional agendas.

We will continue monitoring the situation in Amahlathi and Makana, but will continue pushing for a much bolder intervention by the MEC, which will see the councils dissolved.

It is vital that basic services are delivered, efficiently every single day. The Democratic Alliance has a track record of doing exactly that where it governs.

Only a DA government can speed up basic service delivery and build One South Africa for All.

Regards

Kevin Mileham MP
Eastern Cape Premier Campaign Spokesperson for Basic Services

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