The Merafong City Local Municipality is currently letting all of the town of Wedela’s sewage run into the veld and rivers instead of treating it.

Wedela’s wastewater treatment works have not been functioning for most of the past decade. When the Herald visited this sewerage works during the past year, the facility was empty, with no one working there.

What actually happened to Wedela’s human waste was a mystery until two concerned residents of the town pointed out the true extent of the municipality’s non-compliance with environmental legislation to the Herald this week.

According to one of the concerned residents, Mike Mohoza, he has been staying in Wedela Ext 1 since the 1990s.”Back then, it used to be a beautiful area and children would come to swim in the stream,” he says.
All of this, however, changed when the sewerage works was plundered by cable thieves, and it stopped being functional in 2015.

In August of that year, Ina Cilliers of the DA publicly accused the then executive mayor, Maphefo Mogale Letsie, of endangering the area.

The main power supply cable to the Wedela waste water plant had been stolen in May of that year after the municipality did not pay the security company contracted to guard the treatment plant.

This resulted in the plant being stripped of expensive equipment, which means that more than a million litres of sewage are spilling into nearby rivers every day.

The fact that the Wedela waste water treatment plant is not functioning has also been pointed out in various Green Drop Reports, released by the Department of Water and Sanitation.

Mohoza and another concerned resident, Lunga Zituta, showed the Herald how this spillage was continuing and how it was affecting the environment.

The smell of sewage hangs in the air around Wedela Ext 1, and you can immediately hear water flowing as you step into the veld behind the houses.

Instead of a lovely stream, a river of sewage is flowing through the veld and, in places, accumulating in small dams before flowing further.

As far as could be determined, this sewage eventually ends up in the Leeuspruit and then flows towards the Klipdrift Dam near Potchefstroom.

Zituta also showed the Herald a stream of sewage flowing through another section of Wedela Ext 1.

Zituta says that he has been reporting the issues himself since about 2021, and was flabbergasted when he saw that millions were being allocated for the repair of the Wedela sewerage works every year, while no work was being done.

“Around 2022, the ward councillor was looking for temporary solutions, and they even considered redirecting some of this sewerage into the stormwater drains,” says Zituta.

The Herald took the issues to the municipality, but their marketing and communications manager, Temba Fezani, did not reply by printing time.