After community members in the Mbombela region have accused the local municipality of neglecting infrastructure in townships, the municipality has since said that land invasion is delaying the process of delivering certain services.

This follows after heavy rainfalls that caused havoc in their area. According to the residents since the heavy rains started late 2021, they have not received assistance with fixing infrastructures that were destroyed.

Some of the roads in the area were swept away, houses are destroyed and some community members say they cannot drive their vehicles into their yards. Matsafeni is a township that started through land invasion.

The City of Mbombela Local Municipality (CoM) spokesperson, Joseph Ngala, said as most townships that are formed through land invasion community members in Matsafeni do not understand the challenges that comes with invading land.

“The issues of land invasion are a serious concern to us throughout the city. For the longest time we have been appealing to communities to refrain from these but, with very little success. “There are so many areas being invaded leading to communities demanding for services not budgeted for and in many instances not even paid for.”

“The land invasion has caused enormous pressure in the services infrastructure, that people unlawfully connect to the infrastructure which leads to infrastructure failure and non-revenue water and electricity, which as serious challenges to the City’s financial position.” According to a community member who spoke on the condition of anonymity, some people open the dam near the airport whenever it overflows during heavy rains, resulting in their houses and roads being washed away by the water.

“The City of Mbombela Local Municipality does not want to help us repair the damage caused by the water. “Whenever the dam near the airport overflows, they open it and the water makes huge damage on our side. Our houses and the bridges are falling. This is a huge setback for us because we spent a lot of money to build these houses.

“We addressed this with the municipality but they do not want to help us. We do not understand what the delay is about because they initially helped with installing electricity,” he said. Ngala said one of the biggest problems in the area is that Matsafeni is a predominately a farming area.