Ben Mokoena:

Over the past weekend, I decided to take a drive through town during the day, and also in the evening, just to acquaint myself with the happenings since I hadn’t done so for quite a while. What I saw was heartbreaking, to say the least.

Town turning into a ghetto

The Middelburg I once lived in, or inherited in 1994, was a stranger to me and fast turning into a ghetto.

I saw papers and plastic strewn all over the streets including on a major route like Cowen Ntuli.

Next to the new Pick ’n Pay at the Taxi Rank raw sewerage was flowing onto Lylian Ngoyi Street.

On the delivery side of Pick ’n Pay an informal toilet is now in existence, as people using the bar in that area urinate freely there.

I saw grass growing on pavements and in between kerb stones. In some streets, tree branches are literally falling onto the streets and making it almost impossible to drive past.

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Branches scratching top of vehicle

The other day I had to stop and take pictures on Nero Street in Eastdene because the tree branches were scratching the top of my vehicle.

As I drove back from Mhluzi in the evening I found myself driving through darkness as most of the street lights were simply not working.
As for keeping on my lanes, I was guided by my instinct because I live here but otherwise one can’t see properly where one is driving.

The areas demarcated for informal trading are simply being ignored and vendors are occupying spaces as they please.

No walking on pavements soon

In some areas, it was clear to me that we will soon not be able to walk on pavements as more and more people are encroaching on our walkways.

Added to all this I see many people these days everywhere opening motor mechanic workshops in their yards without any law enforcement doing anything to them, and yet we have a whole unit in our Municipality called Law Enforcement.

As for the economy, it became very clear to me that our CBD is becoming one for foreigners, especially Pakistanis. South Africans of all races are being pushed to the margins and only reduced to shoppers.

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Worse in Mhluzi

Mhluzi is worse. Grass cutting is a thing of the past and pavement and road maintenance simply does not exist.
Grass is growing on all the main routes, including along Main Street, Third Avenue and Church Street.

It’s a horror, totally unbelievable that this is a town which only a few years ago was the Masakhane winning town and regarded as the best in Mpumalanga.

A worrisome picture

Then came the reports on Friday regarding the goings-on in our municipality and the Council.

These reports paint a really worrisome picture of the state of our municipality, totally different from the official SOMA address presented by the mayor earlier in the year.

With cash beginning to be in short supply, it is quite clear that things are falling apart in our Municipality.

Most worrying is that, instead of our Councillors holding hands and trying to find solutions to these problems, they are all busy quibbling and insulting each other with derogatory labels.

We now have Councillor Joshua Door, Councillor Accused, Councillor Mswaipeng etcetera, what is all that?

The DA must stop blaming some abstract municipality for all these failures and start to realise that they are part of the problem, especially because they are co-governing our municipality.

• Ben Mokoena is a former Mayor of the Steve Tshwete Local Municipality and is a local icon of the liberation movement opposing Apartheid. He is also a successful businessman of Middelburg.