While municipal employees embark on another week of suspended service delivery, ratepayers have made their way to their designated posts after navigating streets that resemble a war zone, where piles of rubbish, streams of raw sewage and glass-covered pavements can be seen throughout town.

Since Thursday’s climax, media statements have been fed to the public by every political party, denouncing and condemning the fatal shooting that claimed the lives of two men and left two injured at the Steve Tshwete Local Municipality.

These statements, however, have not once addressed or condemned the effects that the strike and its violence have had on ordinary citizens who have been stripped of their human rights.

They have not addressed Middelburg’s youth, who suffered the trauma of being locked down in their classrooms on Thursday, as outraged anarchists marched through the streets uprooting trees, setting fire to rubbish bins, scattering waste and attacking passing motorists.

Residents have received no explanations, solutions or apologies for the ongoing acts of terror that gripped the community, or how the government intends on putting a stop to it.

While the Minister of Cooperative Governance, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, intends on negotiating with municipal employees today to hopefully placate and soothe the disgruntlement of ingrates, ratepayers and residents can rest assured that there will be no advocacy on their behalf.

Strikers maintain their innocence, deny any provocation or criminal activity, and they stand fast that what Middelburg residents have been given for the last year, is what residents will keep getting until their demands are met.

What have residents received?

• Increased tariffs.

• Skyrocketing municipal accounts based on street estimates.

• Substandard service delivery, if at all.

• Debilitating water shortages while thousands of litres of water run down streets.

• Lengthy and ongoing power outages on top of load-shedding.

• Suspended solid waste removal that continues to be billed at the end of each month.

• Fines for outstanding and expired licences from traffic officers who broke an oath by striking as an essential service.

• Raw sewage pollution.

• Acts of vandalism and sabotage of already ageing infrastructure.

• Gunfire on the doorstep of a school hostel.

• Hysterical and fearful learners trapped in classrooms taking note of how a group of people are being rewarded for behaviour that they would be punished for.

And what have municipal employees received?

• Full salaries during the hard lockdown.

• The luxury of working from home while on rotation.

• Monthly remuneration for sitting and drinking at the magasyn.

• Withdrawn criminal charges.

• Increases and back pay with promises of more money and a Level 5 upgrade.