Controversial columnist Paddy Hartdegen rails against the poor quality of SA's water and the imcompetence of councils in his latest column.

As a property owner it is incumbent upon you to pay all the rates, levies and charges for water, electricity, rubbish removal and any other similar services.

Every municipality in the country uses this money to keep the services running.

At least that's the theory.

I've heard allegations about rich people cross-subsidising the poor; I've heard how the tariffs levied by the municipalities are different; I've even heard that the rate at which a household's meter spins is different depending on where you live. Some people say that meters spin more quickly in richer suburbs to generate more income for the council.

I've heard many more conspiracy theories and most of them have actually been debunked. There may be some discrepancies and I know that there are different tariff structures for different consumers but are the rich folk directly subsidising the poor? I think this is unlikely. However, if anyone has any evidence of such subsidisation I'd love to hear about it.

Let's get onto the more worrying subject that got me thinking about local authorities and their role in service delivery. Last week there was a news release about a special task team that the government has set up to deal with the service delivery problems in 280 municipalities around country.

The task team – oddly enough a partnership between the Department of Provincial and Local Government and the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut – has already investigated three municipal regions: Koukamma in the Eastern Cape, Greater Marble Hall in Limpopo and Emfuleni in Gauteng.

Each one of the three has what the Minister of Provincial and Local Government calls "a crisis of sanitation". What does that mean? It means that contaminated water is pouring into our pipes as drinking water. It's not purified. It's unclean. And raw sewage is spilling untreated into our river systems criss-crossing our land.

What are the main reasons for sewage spillages? Minister Sicelo Shiceka says it's a result of "limited general and financial management and an absence of technical skills". Take away the euphemisms and what is it actually?

It's simple, gross incompetence.

The municipal officials responsible for running the sanitation services are useless – and my own view is that they need to be summarily dismissed without pay or benefits and, if possible, even prosecuted for negligence because they're putting your life and mine on the line.

Their proven incompetence is killing people and we can't keep turning a blind eye on this fact? Look at Delmas, Louis Trichardt, Vereeniging, Vanderbijlpark and then count the dead. Sadly, the list is endless.

Take one of the most recent reports – the case of the Emfuleni local authority. Now we know that it has been taken to court several times before by the Save the Vaal Environment (SAVE), a non-governmental organisation that's trying to protect the Vaal River.

SAVE has succeeded in getting court orders issued against this municipality to compel them to stop spilling raw sewage into the Klip and Vaal Rivers. Has the council complied with the orders? Not a damn. Emfuleni has simply ignored them.

In fact, at a court hearing in December, the municipality didn't even bother to send a legal representative to respond to the charges against it. Emfuleni ignores all court orders and keeps pumping rotten, sewage-filled, contaminated water into the Vaal and Klip Rivers. Last week, there was a report that more than 20 tons of rotting, dead fish had been pulled from Vaal River in the past three weeks.

In another survey late last year, the sanitation and water purification systems in 30 municipal districts in the Eastern and Western Cape were surveyed and the researchers found that the quality of polluted water going into each one of these plants was exactly the same as the quality of water coming out of them.

In other words the water wasn't being sanitised or cleaned at all. It was as filthy when it went back into the pipes as it had been when it entered the works for treatment.

It's those local authorities, and many others too, that expect their residents and ratepayers to drink this filth, to wash their fresh lettuce in it, or rinse their home-grown tomatoes in water that's concentrated with life-threatening bacteria.

Thank you very much Mr and Mrs Useless Local Authority.

Thank you for what you've done.

With the Zimbabwe cholera crisis, many South Africans are being duped into thinking that the cholera cases reported around the country are a result of Zimbabwean refugees bringing in the disease. Medical specialists have discounted this saying, instead, that South Africa is facing its own cholera crisis because of shockingly poor water quality and the disastrous state of water in our rivers.

It's a real problem – not media hype – as already 2,000 people in Limpopo have contracted the disease and more cases are reported daily. Eskom even halted its building work on the new Medupi power station last week because of a suspected cholera infection.

Councils in the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal have all reported outbreaks of cholera – and the infection rates are rising by the week. It seems to me that the water and sanitation services have all but collapsed – save for the larger regions like Johannesburg, Tshwane, Cape Town, Durban and Bloemfontein where the water quality is monitored and, we are told, is completely safe. Maybe that's just a matter of time.

Worryingly, South Africa is defined as a water scarce country and because of this we all have a responsibility to protect and use water wisely.

Guess what, that includes you Mr and Mrs Local Authority.

But try telling them this and what do they do? They laugh – and then have another "meeting" with their tantalising snacks to keep their already-fat tummies full.

A monthly pay check and a fat tummy seems to be all they can think about.

In simple terms, Mr and Mrs Local Authority, it is you that are failing your citizens – and it is you that are threatening the lives of all South Africans too.

I think that it's high time the South African people stood up and demanded service and if they don't get it then they must form their own groups – such as SAVE – and take the councils to court so that the courts can compel these incompetent local authorities and individuals to perform.

I think it's pathetic that the government's had to set up a task team to make three useless councils do their work.

What I think would be much more decisive and praiseworthy is for the task team to fire all the incompetent people employed in each of these local councils and then employ new skills – even if they have to bring back those retired, competent professionals who left the councils because of affirmative action – and get the sanitation systems working again.

We must take this initiative and we must fight Mr and Mrs Useless Local Authority who are so appallingly bad.

We must fight them until they're out of office because they are not only undermining our constitutional rights now. You see, Mr and Mrs Local Authority you are now compromising our health, spreading diseases and killing us one by one.

We need to stop that.

And, we need Mr and Mrs Local Authority out of office and on the streets so that someone else, who is competent and capable, can replace them.

*Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com. The content of his columns constitutes his personal opinion and don't pretend to be facts or advice. Contact him at paddyhar@telkomsa.net.

Readers' Comments
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Before you go and alarm the masses don't you think that the least you could do is verify your facts and find out where your water comes from, an investigation will reveal that drinking water in Gauteng is sourced from the Vaal Dam, which has not had any raw sewage released into it, and is upstream from where the sewage discharges have occurred, and while the local authorities maybe negligent in there treatment of sewage, the good people who supply your water did take the time and effort to ensure that we are not dependent on those water bodies as a source of water.

While it may not be a good idea to indulge in recreational activities in the rivers and to use the water directly from the rivers, the water that is pumped to your home is not contaminated in anyway. When writing articles may I suggest that you investigate properly and specifically address the issues that have merit, and not write for the sake of sensationalism. - Riaz Dadabhay

I didn't read the whole article because in the beginning of it I stopped at "the rich subsidising the poor". This jogged my memory of more than one occasion standing in the row at the municipal office to make a payment. A person in front of me – living in a middle to lower income area (according to the address) - sat with an astronomical municipal bill which was in arrears and has been for months. This lady made a payment which was not even enough to cover the interest and thereby her electricity supply was not cut off.

I am a law abiding citizen and would not use electricity if I couldn't afford it. What puzzles me, though, is why on more than one occasion, they actually cut my supply when according to them I was in arrears. I proved to them that I was not. My bill was around R300. The other lady around R27k. I was living in a middle-to-upper class RENTED house. I find this bitter pill a little difficult to swallow. - Marie Mellet

Fortunately we will get our chance to say our say: probably in April this year.
Use it! - Sipho

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