Welcome to the ghost town of Mahikeng, Mr President Cyril Ramaphosa.
This was the stern welcome call by various residents of the North West who depicted to him the deteriorating state of their capital city - which was once an economic and political hub of the former Bophuthatswana government under Lucas Manyane Mangope.
Ramaphosa was in town as part of his promise he made during his State of the Nation Address (Sona) that he would organise presidential imbizos in all different provinces to gauge the needs of local residents.
North West was the first to be visited by Ramaphosa and his ministers. While welcoming his visit, residents from all parts of the provinces expressed their dissatisfaction with their different municipalities and district municipalities.
One of them was Mapule Mabale. In her address to Ramaphosa, Mabale said: “We do not have water. Our water is dirty. You cannot drink nor wash with it. We have a lot of swimming pools in Mahikeng. Those swimming pools are the potholes. They damaged our cars. The prices of tyres have gone up in Mahikeng due to these potholes. We have to travel to Klerksdorp or Rustenburg to fix our tyres,” Mabale said.
Similar sentiments were expressed by others who said: others complained about lack of job opportunities for young people accusing local mining companies of allegedly employing people from outside the North West. North West provincial MECs were not spared as they were accused of allegedly failing to build schools, roads and allegedly allocating government tenders to their friends and relatives. Victims of floods also told Ramaphosa that their provincial administrator and politicians did not assist, saying some of their houses and properties were still ruined due to the heavy floods.
In his bid to address the concern of the community, Ramaphosa called his individual ministers to deal with all the issues raised in their respective portfolios. Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula was outright in his response and cried out loud about corruption in municipalities. In his address, he singled out Maquassi Hills Local Municipality - whose main tarred road has literally been swept away by floods.
“Money was budgeted for roads in Maquassi Hills for roads but R86 million was returned to the National Treasury. They were not constructing roads but mainly focused on corruption. We have agreed with the premier that Sanral will take over the rehabilitation of the roads in the North West.
“We are going to deal with those swimming pools. The predecessors of Premier Bushy Maape did not nothing to deal with the deteriorating state of the roads,” Mbalula said.
All these prompted Ramaphosa to warn municipalities and urged them to work together in a form of District Development Model (DDM) saying no municipality in the country would “work in silo”.
“We must get rid of corruption. Corruption must be a thing of the past. We must work together to serve the interest of our people and not ourselves. We are going to focus on service delivery,” Ramaphosa said.
Political Bureau