eThekwini not serious about ongoing sewage crisis as court matter drags – ActionSA KZN leader
eThekwini not serious about ongoing sewage crisis as court matter drags – ActionSA KZN leader
- Zwakele Mncwango says eThekwini is delaying court proceedings related to the ongoing sewage crisis.
- He doubts the municipality will file an answering affidavit, after the courts extended the deadline by a month.
- A friend of the court says officials are not competent enough to maintain the R54-billion budget.
The leader of ActionSA in KwaZulu-Natal believes the eThekwini Metro is not serious about the court matter related to the ongoing sewage crisis.
“eThekwini has come with delay tactics. Before we even started the court proceedings, we actually tried to engage with the City in many instances, but they were not responding to us,” said ActionSA’s KZN leader, Zwakele Mncwango, on Monday.
He was speaking to the media outside the Durban High Court, where ActionSA instituted legal proceedings against several national government departments and eThekwini itself for failing to maintain sewage infrastructure.
Mncwango was joined by the former deputy mayor of eThekwini and Abantu Batho Congress (ABC) leader, Philani Mavundla, who is a friend of the court in the matter.
ActionSA’s legal team has asked the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Durban to compel government entities tasked with resolving the ongoing sewage and infrastructure crisis to appoint an independent party to guide the process.
Mncwango said:
He said the delay in the court matter on Monday was proof of the lack of care for the sewage crisis.
“Today, there is evidence eThekwini is not serious about this issue. I doubt they will file their answering affidavit by the end of March… we will see if they will do that.
“We do not believe the City’s leadership is serious about these matters. The City will find itself in a difficult position.
“We have ABC joining us in this matter, and their president has a lot of evidence that eThekwini has ignored the infrastructure, not because of budgets, but because of the leadership of the City.”
ActionSA and ABC are at the Durban High Court, where they are taking @eThekwiniM and various government departments to court after failing to fix sewer infrastructure in eThekwini Metro Municipality. pic.twitter.com/s3fRzQXew4
— ActionSA-KZN (@ActionSA_KZN) February 27, 2023
Mavundla, who was the chairperson of the human settlements and infrastructure committee for a year, said he knew “100% of what was going on”.
“The evidence we will be assisting the court with goes as far as the letters between myself, as chairperson of the human settlements and infrastructure committee, the leadership of the City, the province, and as far up as the president himself.
“We had a meeting with the president and the premier to discuss these issues. We wrote a 58-page report only talking about infrastructure.
“Nobody in this country can say they do not know what is happening in eThekwini. We are here putting it on the table, it is not about ABC or ActionSA, but about the people.”
He claimed there were 27 wastewater plants, and that engineers could not audit at least two because they had dilapidated severely.
He said:
He said the City was not ignoring issues, but that leadership and officials simply did not understand governance.
“SA is a failed state, that is why we are on Stage 6 load shedding. If eThekwini was a company doing a R54-billion turnover, what type of CEO would you need?
“We just have people who are incompetent, including officials who are getting paid millions in salaries. Those who know what to do are being left behind.”
In a statement last week, the eThekwini mayor’s spokesperson, Ml’suleki Mntungwa, said the City noted the action by the ABC and ActionSA.
WATCH: @ActionSA_KZN leader Zwakele Mncwango is in the Durban High Court where they are taking @eThekwiniM and various national depts to court regarding the ongoing sewage crisis. Mncwango addresses supporters during a short break. @News24 @TeamNews24 pic.twitter.com/guVHHVcLO1
— Kaveel Singh (@kaveels) February 27, 2023
“Our legal team is preparing an opposing affidavit and is still within the timelines to respond.
“However, we want to reiterate our call to councillor Philani Mavundla and Action SA to share with the relevant authorities whatever information they have that supports their view that the leadership of the municipality has committed wrongdoing.”
He said the municipality was working around the clock to fix sewer lines that were damaged by the floods.
“Our starting point had to be pump stations as these are critical in preventing pollution of our rivers and the sea. Now that we have fixed the pump stations, we have begun to connect our sewer lines.
“We want to reassure eThekwini residents that we remain committed to running a clean and transparent administration.”
