Mkhondo mayor in Mpumalanga is leaving in fear after receiving death threats on his phone. This comes after numerous disagreements with shop owners in Mkhondo Municipality. Following his door to door campaign that saw a number of the shops being closed down but the shop owners have distanced themselves from the threats.
Mkhondo Municipality is one of the municipalities which owe Eskom millions of rand! Its outstanding bill to Eskom is now sitting at a whopping 40 million rand and the Municipality was on the verge of having their electricity cut off.
The mayor says Eskom supplies them with 10-million rand worth of electricity but they only make about 3 million rand whey they sell it to the community and businesses. This prompted them to launch operation Khokha, or operation pay up. It is a campaign that saw the mayor having to go door-to-door checking on businesses within the municipality and what they uncovered was shocking.
“We visited the majority of shops in the location that’s when we found out that the shop owners they don’t buy the electricity ,they connected illegally,” said Mkhondo’s Mayor Vusi Motha.
However, shop owners deny ever connecting electricity illegally. “As far as I know and i can tell I don’t know anyone who did those illegal connections and if there is any the municipality has the power to do whatever the measurement they have to take but what they are doing is targeting every foreigner shops.”
Motha has since reported the death threats he has been receiving. “They are not just focusing on me only but now focusing on my family which is causing real problems because my family are not part of municipality.”
Shop keepers deny sending these threatening smses. Instead they’ve accused municipal officials of verbally threatening them.
