Bothaville in the Free State, has been transformed into a life threatening, refuse strewn, dumpsite where raw sewage infects the Vaal river and municipal workers with no work ethic loaf around all day. A desperate Boelie Bothma, a DA councillor of the Nala municipality, comprising the towns of Bothaville and Wesselsbron, took the media on a tour of Bothaville on Tuesday 1 october 2019, and he says service delivery in the municipality has collapsed.
Doors of electricity substations are held closed with bricks and stones because there is no money for locks. Money for electrical switches has also run out and cables are now joined with isolation tape where the switches should be.
In the industrial zone the electrical substation roof has been stolen and with the rain season coming the substation is likely to explode says Bothma. Close to the substation where the roof was stolen is a mini substation where the brick wall has been broken down and the bricks carried away.
A children’s home is located next to this mini substation. According to Bothma, local businessmen and other townspeople are trying their best to keep the town clean but outside Bothaville household refuse and building rubble is strewn over an estimated 50 hectares.
Rubbish is strewn next to the R504 on the way to Leeudoringstad. The municipal manager and financial head of the municipality don’t even stay in Bothaville. The municipal manager, Chris Mokomela, stays in Bloemfontein and the financial manager, Sandile Busakwe, stays in Welkom.
Mokomela was charged in 2017 by the Department of Labour because open electricity connections endangered the lives of workers. He then promised to fix the electricity network and the charge was withdrawn. Today the electricity network is worse than ever.
Bothma says that cadre deployment is the order of the day and that most people in management posts were deployed in the days when Ace Magashule, a hardened criminal, was still the premier of the Free State. Bothma says the municipality is not collecting debt and most residents don’t pay municipal accounts.
Bothma says there is no money to buy spare parts and the little money that do come in is just used to pay salaries. He also says the little bit of spare parts in municipal store rooms are being stolen due to non existent security measures.
Bothma added that municipal vehicles that break are stripped and carried away piece by piece.
Commentary:
Bothaville is but a microcosm of what is happening in the Free State and other provinces. Fences, electricity poles and other infrastructure are being widely looted and carted away. The once beautiful Free State is being turned into a rubbish strewn wasteland and this is largely the result of the ruinous rule of the previous ANC premier, Ace Magashule, now ANC Secretary General.
Magashule ran the Free State during Jacob Zuma’s time as President and he ran the Free State as his spaza shop, deploying his own people all across the Free State so that he – Magashule – could control tenders in each and every municipality in the Free State.
What is more is that the story of the Free State is largely also the story of Africa where big-man-tin-pot dictator rule, looting and corruption is the order of the day all across Africa.
South Africa was sentenced to death the day the ANC – a black nationalist and traditionalist African movement with Marxist roots – but pretending to be a multi racial beacon of morality – took over.
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