Residents want action on service

Residents of Hartbeespoort expressed their displeasure with the dire state of the sewerage system and general collapse of service delivery in Madibeng in no uncertain terms when more than 500 attended a public protest meeting in the NG Church in Schoemansville last Wednesday.
After a lengthy discussion, in which several residents vented their frustration, the executive of the Hartbeespoort Residents Forum, which called the meeting, was tasked to investigate several options to take the matter further, including one that entailed the establishment of a Section 21 company which could negotiate with Madibeng to take over the provision of certain services from the municipality. Another option would be to have Hartbeespoort included in the Tshwane municipal area.
Several speakers mentioned the issue of a rates boycott and were enthusiastically applauded. Mr Pieter Rautenbach, who presented the options and who previously propagated a rates boycott, said that they have since obtained legal advice of the opinion that a rates boycott could legally succeed was based on a misinterpretation of the Municipal Systems Act.
Rautenbach has also obtained the approval of the meeting to object to a proposal of the Municipal Demarcation Board to change the demarcation of wards in Madibeng. He displayed a map of the new Ward 29 and said that it would now include Damonsville and Mothotlung. He wanted the approval of the meeting to object to the proposed demarcation as the public consultation process was flawed.
Kormorant reported on the proposed new demarcation of wards on 14 January and the fact that the opposition parties were not opposed to the proposals as it would not materially affect the demography of the wards. The ANC, however, was not happy with the proposals as it wanted it to favour the ruling party. According to the proposed demarcation on the Municipal Demarcation Board’s website, Damonsville is included in neither the new Ward 29 or 30, but in the new Ward 28, which includes the present Ward 29 which has been an ANC stronghold in any case, while Mothotlung falls in the new Ward 20.
A DA councillor of Brits, Clr Eddie Barlow, who attended the meeting, said that the meeting was being misled on several counts. He said that the report that the sewerage system was now functioning was only partially true; the statement that technicians of Tshwane was maintaining the electricity grid was blatantly false, as was the statement that Damonsville and Mothotlung would be demarcated with Ifafi, Melodie and Meerhof. The report that R2 million was paid over to Tshwane was correct, but it was not at the behest of any individual present at the meeting and the report that the power was about to be cut was based on a misunderstanding.
Barlow said he was amazed that Rautenbach should want to object to the demarcation proposals unless he was acting on behalf of the ANC and was gearing up for the 2011 municipal elections.
(As controversial mayor of the erstwhile Hartbeespoort municipality, Rautenbach was a member of the so-called BIG, an organisation that purported to represent ratepayers, residents and property owners but whose only members were councillors. In his annual report in 1996 he bragged that his municipality was the only one with a democratically elected white council in North West. In 1999, while Hartbeespoort was still wasting ratepayers money on endless litigation, amongst others against the Demarcation Board, Rautenbach tried to persuade the DA to accept him as a candidate in the new dispensation but was rejected. In the early 2000s he became chairman of the local branch of SANCO, an ANC front organisation, which campaigned on behalf of the squatters that were eventually evicted from Schoemansville Ext 2 - not, as claimed at the meeting, where the Village Mall shopping centre is today and not because of Rautenbach. In the last municipal elections Rautenbach emerged as a strong ANC supporter sharing the stage with ANC politicians who campaigned in the ward. Many people who are aware of his record are wary of his motives and mistrust anything in which he is involved.)
Meanwhile the residents of Brits will be meeting in the Brits town hall next Monday night to discuss service delivery and sewerage and water problems. The mayor, acting municipal manager and directors of the municipality have been invited to attend.
It is also reported that industrialists of Brits have undertaken in principle to provide an initial amount of R25 000 to initiate action for legal intervention in Madibeng in terms of the Municipal Finance Management Act.

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3 February 2010