City is the enemy

THE ANC rejects the new water tariffs in Cape Town as cunning and unjustifiable. The ANC joins the over 80% of residents who have strongly objected to the new water and sanitation tariffs which kicked in last Sunday.

For the City to forge ahead with these unjustifiable tariffs over and against such overwhelming opposition means the City has effectively become the enemy of the people.

In March, the City sought to manipulate people’s fear and vulnerability over the invented Day Zero armageddon by sneaking in a 26.9% tariff increase on water and sanitation. Residents of Cape Town may have been scared but they were not stupid. Even though the City has since recoiled from that ridiculously high tariff, they have still not gone down enough, especially given the current water dam levels and rainfall.

The ANC condemns the City for treating its residents with disdain. On one hand they say they are trying to raise R3 billion for new bulk-water projects, and on the other hand they have spent the last few months claiming bulk-water supply is the sole responsibility of the national government and repeated that line like a broken record whenever they were called to account for their failures.

The ANC demands all these water and sanitation tariff increases be in line with inflation.

The material conditions that resulted in these exorbitant tariff proposals have changed drastically and we demand the City follow suit. The City deserves water security but it should not break people’s back.

We reject the new tariff increases for households, whether it’s the 10.10% for those who consume less than 6kl a month or other consumption brackets, as these are way above inflation.

The conditions that warranted Level 6 water punishment to consumers and these tariffs no longer exist and must be greatly eased.

The ANC is going to challenge these unjustifiable increases in court and will galvanise all Capetonians to march to the City and demand fair tariffs.

This is a slippery slope that the City cannot be allowed to go into.

We cannot allow this thumb-sucking of numbers. It’s time the City returns to normalcy and stops using the water crisis (real or imagined) as a moneymaking scheme.

Faiez Jacobs Provincial Secretary