The event was part of the municipality’s mayoral imbizo, a public engagement drive aimed at getting to know the basic challenges that communities face in their day-to-day lives; while at the same time providing a platform for information sharing by government departments and entities. The challenges that most community members raised were lack of maintenance on their gravel road, shortage of water, a community hall, inaccessibility to markets for emerging farmers to sell their produce, as well as livestock theft which they said was on the increase.

“I have cows in my kraal but the increase in stock theft scares me … we need the government to do more to protect farmers,” said Godfrey Ngobeni, one of the community members in the area. Responding to challenges raised by the community structures, the mayor said the municipality would deal with all challenges raised in collaboration with other responsible departments. She said on the issue of water, the municipality will engage with the Mopani District Municipality as they are the water authority.

Also read: Moraka hands over state-of-the-art library in Mavalani

“We have taken note of your challenges and are committed to addressing them as a collective with colleagues from other departments as some of the issues raised fall outside the mandate of the municipality,” she said. She also promised to raise the issue of road maintenance as soon as possible. “Municipal graders would be coming here soon to attend to your road, we do not need a budget to do that because we already have graders working on the ground.”