As KwaZulu-Natal’s MEC for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, I want to leave no stone unturned in my quest to encourage municipal workers and community champions to work together in cleaning up neglected inner-city townships.
Over and above my schedule of overseeing 61 municipalities and the traditional affairs of the province, and ANC MPP and provincial minister, I have been charged with ensuring that a list of community grievances in the former apartheid townships of Mariannridge and Mariannhill are attended to within months.
The Durban townships, almost 40 years old, were created by apartheid’s separate residential enclaves for coloured, Indian and African communities and have ageing infrastructure, such as water pipes and storm water drainage.
I was assigned by Premier Zweli Mkhize to attend to the communities’ daily problems, including an invasion of land and RDP homes, as well as neglected parks that have become breeding grounds for rape and drug peddling.
After a series of service delivery protests, the premier and I visited the residents earlier this year. The house visits culminated in an indaba at which the mainly coloured community, including residents of Wentworth and Sydenham, claimed they were being marginalised from the mainstream of a changing society, jobs and economic opportunities.
The premier launched a programme in which I was named as an MEC champion for the eThekwini district, largely to promote social cohesion, harmony and nation-building.
A social cohesion and service delivery consultative conference took place before Christmas at the Moses Mabhida Stadium with communities from Newlands East, Sydenham, Mariannridge, Greenwood Park and Wentworth.
In terms of my deployment, I set about to co-ordinate and promote the consultative gathering aimed at ensuring the following critical aspects:
l Addressing the broad and specific service delivery issues within the specified communities.
l Promoting and embracing social cohesion.
l Accelerating service delivery particularly in the “minority” five wards through war room functionality, which in the main will be addressing social ills faced by these respective communities/or wards (wards 11, 13, 15, 31, 34, 68), covering Newlands East, Sydenham, Mariannridge, Greenwood Park and Wentworth.
Also, this campaign falls within the context of Sakuma Sakhe, a programme aimed at accelerating service delivery, engaging communities and constituencies and addressing their grievances.
Recently, I revisited Mariannridge and Mariannhill to assess progress.
But community activists told the provincial government leadership that they were concerned that a lack of development was stunting their development and dampening their social cohesion efforts.
After analysing grievances, I launched an environmental clean-up operation recently in Mariannridge and Mariannhill. I had to field a myriad complaints and issues in the presence of the MEC for Health, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo.
Community activists and councillors said they were impatient with the lack of service and attention from the city’s parks and recreation and housing departments.
Mariannhill community leaders and councillors also complained about land invasion and occupation of RDP homes. They told us an open space needed to be cleaned up to create a soccer field for teenagers to distract them from the poverty, drug abuse, alcoholism and joblessness.
The communities stated in their memorandum to the provincial leadership that they were still being alienated from the city’s mainstream economy and changing society.
Community activist Jenny Boyce-Hlongwa put up a strident case about issues at Ward 13 in Mariannridge that the fact that it incorporated nine established communities, was impacting negatively on service delivery and practical working relations because of its size and unique developmental needs.
The community listed critical issues that could potentially change the face of poverty in Mariannridge, such as:
l The fast-tracking of applications for prepaid electricity as many pensioners, social grantees and jobless residents could not pay for the introduction of the system by the city’s electricity and housing departments.
l Residents are demanding their title deeds.
l Flat dwellers continue to call for bins to place refuse bags and complain about only four clean-ups a year.
l Frustration over the state of the neglected sports fields and the illegal occupation of amenities such as change rooms amid calls for the establishment of a multifunctional sports amenity to cater for athletics, rugby and soccer for local schools and encourage youths to promote a healthy lifestyle away from drugs and alcohol.
l A call for poverty alleviation programmes, such as school nutrition, and as well as regular grass-cutting cycles and public works infrastructure development to present new hope to residents disillusioned and apathetic by the state of neglect of their neighbourhood and joblessness.
l An appeal to government to build a Further Education and Training institution to provide skills training and development for unskilled and restless youths.
l Safety and security has to be stepped up to curb the drug and alcohol trades which are driving housebreaking and thefts.
l Loss of water through burst pipes and stormwater drainage damages to residential properties and roads.
l Mariannhill residents complained about the poor maintenance of street verges and overgrown grass and a lack of soccer fields.
I assured the communities that the provincial government was determined to oversee the service delivery of municipalities, such as the big-budget Ethekwini Municipality, which is responsible for the upkeep of inner-city townships.
I refused to listen to excuses and then set tight deadlines for Durban to clean up its act and bring relief to these townships, and included neighbouring KwaNdegenzi, Klaarwater and St Wendolins for service delivery action.
During a clean-up operation I joined the MEC for Health, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo, and fielded complaints about the state of the townships littered with refuse bin bags and overgrown grass and verges.
Months of neglect, bureaucracy and indifference by Durban Solid Waste workers and officials has downgraded these townships into rundown pools of poverty, unemployment and despair.
Drug trafficking, substance abuse, alcoholism, teenage pregnancy, rape and domestic violence fuelled by drug and alcohol abuse continues to strangle the growth of these hubs.
I am determined to drive local economic development and inspect projects such as community co-operatives and attend to lobbying the private sector to stimulate local and foreign investments and job-creation projects, particularly within my department’s small-town rehabilitation scheme.
This government is seen as not delivering service.
Now we are taking responsibility as a provincial government to step in because we see our people are helpless in their call for service delivery.
I have insisted that the DSW should provide bins and bin liners while the housing department, as the landlords, should attend to the problems of the flat-dwellers.
I have told supervisors and councillors to stop attending meetings and attend to issues, and I have warned municipal and government officials and workers who don’t want to do their work according to our service-driven challenge that they must get out of the system.
I have assured residents that the government has budgeted a “quick deliverable” of a household bursary, valued at R900, to assist communities to beat the unemployment blues and provide food for their families.
I have promised the community that departments such as health, housing and agriculture would assist communities in ensuring environmental excellence, better living conditions, health clinics and self-help seed planting projects to grow fruit and vegetable to sustain household needs.
I believe that in line with our political mandate our communities and constituencies deserve better, so let’s clean up our act and give our people a better life.
l Dube is KwaZulu-Natal’s MEC for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs and writes in her official capacity
Daily News