Durban — EThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda has hit back at opposition parties for criticising the city for its water and sanitation infrastructure failure.
He said, “They are bad ambassadors for the city and they are chasing investors and tourists away.”
This was Kaunda’s opening speech at the anti-crime and social cohesion summit on Tuesday at the Durban exhibition centre.
The city has been in hot water with sewage spilling into the rivers and going into the ocean, the high levels of E.coli in the oceans, dry/dirty swimming pools, and sewage spills being reported all over the city.
Kaunda said the tourists who come into the City from overseas to tour around always tell him eThekwini is beautiful.
“They always say, Mr Mayor, your City is beautiful,” he said. South Africans, especially Durbanites, were bad ambassadors for their City, with problems that were brought about by national disasters, he said.
“Every day they are on national television saying the city is not beautiful. South Africans are not good ambassadors. The levels of crime do not compliment the beauty of this City.”
Kaunda said opposition parties knew the infrastructure was damaged by the floods and that it was being fixed.
“I do not understand how one can chase investors and tell people to go to Cape Town. What kind of people are these people? I do not understand them. How could you chase investors from your city where there would be jobs created?” asked Kaunda.
He said the opposition parties were chasing investors from Umhlanga; every day they stood at Umhlanga and told people to go away. He added that people running businesses in Umhlanga were joining the DA because of political reasons instead of joining the municipality in fixing the challenges the city has.
He said Durban is beautiful and that is something that cannot be taken away from it. “This city is beautiful so we must secure people who live in it,” said Kaunda.
Last month, the ActionSA brought a high court application against the eThekwini Municipality and government ministers for failure to maintain sewage infrastructure.
The party is seeking an order declaring that the respondents were in contravention of several laws as they had failed to maintain, repair, replace or install the necessary infrastructure to prevent the release or flow of sewage or untreated effluent into eThekwini’s waterways, rivers and beaches.
Furthermore, the DA had asked Kaunda to swim at Umhlanga beach after the public was told that it is safe to swim there but the deputy city manager Dr Musa Gumede swam instead. Kaunda however swam with tourists during the official launch of the festive season plan last Thursday.
Last week, Kaunda said they had conducted an assessment at Umhlanga’s Main and Bronze beaches and they were pleased that the quality of the water had improved after receiving consistently safe results from November 10 to 25.
He also said lifeguards had been deployed to both beaches to ensure the safety of swimmers.
However, the Umhlanga Main and Bronze were closed again this week by the municipality after a spike in E.coli levels.
ActionSA provincial leader Zwakele Mncwango said the mayor must come clean and answer if the water is clean or not.
He said science does not lie and it would be irresponsible of opposition parties to not say anything.
“The issue here is the health and safety of the citizens. We’ve just come back from Covid-19 and we cannot handle another outbreak; our hospitals won’t be able to,” he said.
The DA had not responded by the time of publication.
Daily News