Slow pace of mop-up a disgrace

IN SOME countries, mop-up processes following natural disasters like floods are always swift and done within days.

Critical to everything, authorities always rush to restore services like water and electricity because those are the most critical essentials in our daily lives.

If you don’t restore water, you risk having another disaster of water-borne diseases such as typhoid and scabies. And if you don’t swiftly restore power, you risk having frustrated citizens resorting to looting businesses.

Hence, it is critical that in every disaster the process to restore those services is always fast.

Now, come to South Africa, the Durban floods and mopping up process is moving at a snail’s pace. It has exposed the weakness of the ANC government in all three spheres; at national, provincial and local government level.

How? It took the ANC government almost a month to restore water services in some areas, like Ntuzuma and Tongaat. The people of Ottawa and Waterloo near Verulam have to resort to violent protests to attract the attention of the eThekwini Municipality.

It also took the government almost two weeks to fully restore power supplies in some areas, like KwaMashu and Castlehill.

Worse still, up to this day places like Queensburgh in Durban are still in shambles, with sewage spilling into the nearby river.

The least said about repairing roads the better. Take, for example, the Nhlungwana bridge which links Inanda and Besters to Ntuzuma. Except for cordoning it off as unusable, nothing has been done to repair it.

That's not all. Go to places like Osindisweni, Maphumulo and Umlazi. The infrastructure there is still in shambles and there are no signs that the government intends to get it fixed as practically soon as possible.

A month later, some destitute families are still crammed in community halls with young children.

One prominent thing that has been done by the ANC government has been giving overpriced food parcels to victims and posing for pictures to boost the egos of politicians and the fading image of the governing party.

Until the ANC goes back to the drawing board and rids itself of the scourge of corruption, it will continue to lose support from the majority of the country’s citizens.