Politicians ‘coin it’ in Mafube, while residents struggle with the basics

There is little to no service delivery at all in Mafube Local Municipality in the Free State, and yet politicians in council continue to be paid, allegedly through grants from national government.

The municipality is currently under administration and has no budget.

The Citizen spoke to the leader of an opposition party, Oupa Mokoena, who told the paper that the municipality has failed to correctly bill residents and businesses for more than 10 years.

The trip is part of The Citizen‘s travels across the length and breadth of the country to explore the lives, struggles, successes, and frustrations of everyday South Africans ahead of this year’s local government elections.

Mokoena is the leader of Mafube First, a political organisation formed by residents and local businesses in that town.

“Let me tell you something you cannot say people are owing you when you are not billing them, the municipality is saying that the community members are owing them, but they are not sending bills to the community.

“This has not been happening for 10 years. It has been happening for more than that,” he said.

Billing system

Mokoena, who was a councillor for the ANC joining Mafube First, said the municipality has not been billing people because of problems with the billing system.

“If national [government] had stepped in, this administration should have been gone a long time ago. No one has stepped in,” he said,

Mokoena said Mafube is currently under administration. But even that process has not made things better for the residents of this town.

“They will just change administrators for the salaries and their cadres to come and work here and take money. That’s all they can do,” he said.

Poor service delivery

Mokoena said service delivery in Mafube is so bad that he believes that council should have been dissolved much earlier.

“But they can’t do that because they know if they dissolve Mafube they are going to lose the municipality and their salaries,” he said.

Mokoena said that because the municipality is effectively broke, it uses grants from the national government to pay council salaries.

“It is very sad because the money for services that should go to the people goes to their salaries,” he said.

He said water in Mafube is unsafe to drink. Residents must at all times boil the water from the tap before they drink it, and when there is no water in the tap, they then have to find other sources of water such as the local river.

“Them [politicians] buy water. We, who do not have money, have to boil water so that we can drink it,” he said.

According to Mokoena, the problem with fetching water from the river is that raw sewage has now started spilling into the river.

Mokoena said another problem in Mafube is potholes which have become more like sinkholes.

He said refuse collection is also problematic in the area.

“They collect it sometimes. If workers do not get paid, they do not work,” he said.

Electricity supply

He said the only good thing Mafube did was appoint an independent company to handle electricity supply and collect electricity charges. Meaning the municipality does not directly supply electricity to residents and businesses.

“The electricity is working. It can fall now for 30 minutes to one hour; it will be working again,” he said.

ANC: Interventions are underway

The ANC in the Free State told The Citizen that the party is aware of the challenges in Mafube. He said interventions were underway.