Residents of Thabazimbi in Limpopo have expressed mixed views on what they expect from President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Thursday evening.
The Thabazimbi Local Municipality has been facing challenges due to a political impasse between African National Congress (ANC) councillors and the Democratic Alliance (DA)-led coalition councillors.
The stalemate has resulted in the formation of two parallel councils, each with its own mayor, speaker, municipal manager and chief financial officer.
Residents say this instability has a detrimental effect on the municipality’s capacity to deliver basic services.
One resident says, “We expect the President to address the service delivery issues around here and fix the load shedding. He must also visit our municipality to address the service problems here.”
Another says, “We have to acknowledge that we had some challenges, in terms of sewer, electricity and water. We wish the President to address the issues regarding the mining communities, because we live next to mines, but we are not employed by these mines. Again we don’t have water here and sewage trenches are left wide opened here. An elderly man fell into the trench and died.”
Coalition
Political analyst, John Molepo says there is a need for legislation related to how coalition governments should operate to ensure that the delivery of basic services is not affected.
Molepo says, “Our people are complaining about services because today there’s new leadership and tomorrow there’s another leadership, which really affects the day-to-day service delivery. The President must address the political killings, and also rampant corruption that are taking place in municipalities. It’s high time South Africa comes up with a framework on how best we can govern these particular coalitions.”
