Corruption and lack of service delivery could harm KZN local councils at polls
Voting is not high on the to-do list for the marooned community of Enkovukeni, located between the town of Manguzi and the Mozambican border area called Ponta do Ouro.
Locals who spoke to DM168 during a visit to the area were adamant that they would not be voting in the upcoming local government elections.
The area is mostly only accessible by boat and hundreds of schoolchildren have to strip off their uniforms when crossing the river to and from school. As if that’s not enough, the community has no running water, electricity or other basic necessities.
“We don’t see the point of voting. We have been voting for years and politicians have been promising us bridges, water … but once the elections are over, they ... forget about us,” said 43-year-old Ray Ngubane, who has lived in Enkovukeni all his life.
He said the community of Enkovukeni, Umhlabuyalingana local municipality’s Ward 10, had decided to boycott the elections as a way of showing its dissatisfaction.
Other residents of Ward 10 are just as angry about the corruption, lack of service delivery, high unemployment, lack of access roads and more. However, they will use their vote in the hope of changing their lives.
When it comes to service delivery, about 46% of households in uMhlabuyalingana get water from a regional or local service provider, 76% have no access to electricity and 12% have no access to toilets. Only 15% of households have access to flush or chemical toilets.
Dumisani Mthembu, a 56-year-old resident of eMazambaneni (also in Ward 10), said that in the previous elections he had voted for the ANC, but that this time around he and a number of other residents had decided to support a local woman for councillor, the IFP’s Sbahle Gumede.
Gumede said she was confident of wresting the ward away from the ANC. She said most locals were tired of the ANC’s “corrupt” administration of the municipality.
Water scarcity was a common problem among the communities across uMhlabuyalingana municipality. Those who can afford it have drilled boreholes, and those who have no money are forced to rely on municipal water tankers.
Nkululeko Mthethwa, the mayor of uMhlabuyalingana municipality, is pleading with residents, including the Enkovukeni community, to exercise their right to vote. He says the municipality is doing its best to deal with their problems.
Mthethwa denied that his municipality was beset by corruption.
“It is the first time that, for a record of five years, we have had a clean audit and an unqualified opinion. The public purse has been very safe with us as we have been able to account for expenditure during these years. Secondly, in uMhlabuyalingana there was an electricity backlog of 81% when we took over. We have narrowed this to 48%.”
Despite this, he acknowledged that uMhlabuyalingana municipality still faced a number of challenges.
Communities across uMhlabuyalingana said the acute shortage of water and sanitation was their biggest problem.
Mthethwa, who is also an ANC election coordinator, said they were confident that the people of uMhlabuyalingana would retain the ANC because “our record speaks for itself... We will speed up things and bring more services and development to our people.”
Naye Mathe, IFP regional chairperson and the party’s head of elections in the region, said his party had been well received.
“We are running a very successful campaign and I am certain we will win many wards from the ANC...”
DM168 elections analyst Wayne Sussman said the ANC and the IFP had signed a deal allowing the ANC to take over in the Johannesburg and Midvaal municipalities in the local elections in 2016. The deal extended to KZN municipalities such as Jozini, Hlabisa and uMhlabuyalingana.
“It will be interesting to see whether the IFP voters are happy with the deal and their working relationship with the ANC. The Jozini municipality is another battlefield and it will be interesting to see which of the two parties prevail there,” he said, adding that uMhlabuyalingana seemed to be a safe bet for the ANC.