‘Place G’town under administration’

CIVIL society and other organisations in Grahamstown yesterday united in a call for Makana municipal council to be dissolved and for the struggling municipality to be placed under full provincial administration.

At a small demonstration outside the city hall, some 200 people braved the scorching heat to demand that something be done about the filthy city with its collapsing infrastructure and dangerously potholed roads.

The municipality has kicked off 2018 owing some R180-million, mostly to Eskom and Amatola Water.

The water utility left the city late last year due to non-payment of what was owed. The city again faces a water crisis of mammoth proportions as the decaying water reticulation infrastructure spews the little water left in the city’s drought-stricken dams into the veld and onto streets.

Eskom’s threats to turn off the lights in the city famous for its many educational institutions, including Rhodes University, have been staved off by the promise of another payment plan.

The municipality has repeatedly reneged on previous payment plans.

Ayanda Kota of the Unemployed Peoples’ Movement said everything else had been tried and there was now no choice but to place the municipality under administration.

“We cannot continue to ask the hyenas to look after the sheep.”

Grahamstown Residents’ Association chairman Philip Machanick said Grahamstown – with the province’s oldest university, high court, airport and vibrant arts and culture – should be the jewel of the Eastern Cape and a magnet for job creation.

“Instead it is going backwards. Streets are more pothole than tar, the water supply keeps failing, sewers leak into the streets, and more and more of our youth have no jobs.”

He blamed the ballooning municipal debt and the municipality’s failure to get the basics right.

Concerned Citizens Committee to Save Makana convener Ron Weissenberg said civil society intended “starting a fire under the bums of Mayor Nomhle Gaga and her councillors”.