SACP Gauteng calls on provincial and national government to investigate service delivery failures in cities of Tshwane and Joburg  

22 May 2017 

The South African Communist Party (SACP) Gauteng Province calls on the provincial and national government to investigate massive service delivery backlogs and crises in the Democratic Alliance (DA) controlled City of Johannesburg and Tshwane Metropolitan Municipalities.

Massive service delivery backlogs in waste removal and cleaning services are amongst many that are reaching crisis levels. Electricity supply disruptions and poor power supply are deeply concerning considering that the winter period is already on our doorstep.

It is clear that the two Cities are not ready to supply electricity during the chilly winter period. We call on the working class and the poor to prepare for the worst winter period. These two cities experienced massive power supply disruptions in the last week when temperatures dropped and the situation has not improved to date.

Just last week, the City of Joburg issued a strange notice appealing to residents to tolerate power supply disruptions instead of announcing plans on how they intend to resolve the problems. The City of Tshwane, on the other hand, has now issued an alert to residents to report service delivery failures after it dismally failed to clear rubbish collections and waste removal backlogs in the last two weeks.

We are now more than ever before vindicated that the desperately concocted DA-EFF coalition was not ready for managing complex and big municipalities with a massive base of the working class and poor people that continue to suffer from the persisting and stubborn legacy of national and racial oppression. It is clear that this right-wing coalition was not and may never be ready to govern the two Cities.

We are now even more convinced that the so-called teams of consultants or "experts" shuttling between the City of Cape Town and the two Cities certainly underestimated the complexity of the task at hand and the unique conditions of the two Cities. Their attempt to impose the Cape Town template on the two Cities is now badly exposed. We wonder how much money they spend on these consultants or “experts”.

It is even clearer now that the DA-EFF coalition in the two Cities rushed to disrupt existing delivery processes and systems whilst not ready to roll-out new ones. This politically inspired rush to disrupt existing service delivery processes has now backfired, with residents at the receiving end of the political mess.

We are convinced that the current wave and outbreak of service delivery protests in the two Cities is clear proof of the political risks brought to bear on the entire province by the complete collapse of service delivery in the two Cities.

We now call on national and provincial government to urgently investigate this self-created crisis and collapse of service delivery in the two Cities before the province is plunged into massive service delivery protests. We strongly believe that if the two Metro’s fail to deliver basic services, urgent intervention is required.

We are deeply concerned that the excellent and remarkable work to stabilise the province by the ANC led provincial government through the Ntirhisano Outreach Programme is now being threatened by the encroaching and creeping failure of the two DA controlled Cities.

Issued by Jacob Mamabolo, Gauteng Provincial Secretary, SACP, 22 May 2017