ON SUNDAY March 5, the executive mayor of the City of Tshwane Solly Msimanga, joined the MEC for Co-operative Governance, Traditional Affairs and Human Settlements Paul Mashatile at an Imbizo at Matubatse Community Hall, Soshanguve.
The event was marred by an ugly incident of a certain “crowd” that was hell-bent on disrupting a government programme. The crowd refused the mayor an opportunity to address the community, but gave MEC Mashatile and ANC councillors a standing ovation. The mayor had to be whisked away by police after the crowd got angry and booed him off stage.
Part of the visit by the MEC was to hand over houses to beneficiaries in Soshanguve Extension 6 and to inspect some government projects in the area. It was discovered that some projects had not been completed, with community members raising other grievances with both the MEC and the mayor.
The people of the capital and Soshanguve need to realise that such “hooligans” who deny the executive mayor a platform to address community needs in the metro are interfering with their own rights (community) to access municipal services.
MEC Mashatile told the community that “when we work as government we have to work with the municipalities; that is why I came with the mayor. Some of the things that have to be done in municipalities have to be done by them”. But how will the mayor and his officials execute such tasks as unfinished housing projects when his administration receives hostile treatment by a group of “hired hooligans”?
It remains the city’s responsibility to work with the provincial government to fast-track some of the unfinished houses so that they can be allocated and we can help the province to address the backlog. The housing needs register indicates that the capital city’s waiting list was as of January this year at 166832 and this figure changes daily as and when people register.
This means there will be more people in need of houses. It means there is still a lot of work to be done to address the housing backlog and that the city and province must assist each other on how the city will use the grant from the province to roll out bulk infrastructure for the servicing of stands and start formalising informal settlements that have not been receiving services.
The MEC told community members that he and the executive mayor had seen first-hand and verified some of the complaints received by his office with regards to housing delivery.
Some of the problems uncovered will need a joint and collective effort from both the provincial leadership and the office of Mayor Msimanga.
Soshanguve residents need to understand that to resolve these issues, the city officials under the command of the executive mayor need to be engaged as some of the challenges are within the scope of the municipality and not the competency of the provincial human settlements department.
There seems to be a trend: two weeks ago at the official opening of the Klip-Kruisfontein Cemetery, the speaker of council and MMC: Agriculture and Environment were rescued by police from an angry mob wearing ANC T-shirts. The mob made it clear that my colleagues were not welcome in Soshanguve and had no business in taking the glory for a project that was initiated by the former ANC administration.
We inherited this municipality with everything - good and bad - and we want to fix all the bad things we found when we occupied office.
No matter how difficult it proves to be, we will continue to deliver services to our people. We are making progress despite resistance often rooted in nefarious party political considerations and not in the best interests of the people who need services.
We anticipated this challenge after wresting control of the city in last August’s polls.
* Cllr Mandla Nkomo, MMC Human Settlements