The recently revived Endumeni Chamber of Business is considering affiliating with the Ladysmith-based Northern KZN Chamber of Business.
This was said at a meeting last Thursday, when Jennifer Wallace, who has run the Northern KZN Chamber of Business for 11 years, addressed the audience.
She explained that in 2022 it was decided to branch out beyond Ladysmith by incorporating Estcourt, Winterton and Bergville.

“This has given us a louder voice and more command when we have to reach out to municipalities and government officials when we have to fight seemingly insurmountable service delivery problems,” Wallace said.
Wallace, who works full-time for the Northern KZN Chamber of Business, said the current model of ‘split municipalities’ – local and district (that have different responsibilities) – has caused a situation where there ‘is a lot of buck-passing’.

“This does affect accountability.
“But we have found that by developing relationships with municipal officials and even government officials in Pietermaritzburg, we can solve issues.
“In Ladysmith, businesses have even assisted the municipality by offering machinery, sand and stone to help with service delivery.”

She lamented that ‘in South Africa, everything is about party politics’.

“When the local and district municipalities have different parties in charge to that of the provincial government, this does hamper development, as parties cannot agree. As businesses, we just want an environment where trade is made easier and we can employ people and produce goods.”

It was said that there is talk of district municipalities being scrapped as the government tries to tackle the innumerable service delivery issues at municipalities.

According to the National Treasury, 151 municipalities are teetering on the brink of collapse, and 43 have already collapsed and require urgent intervention to rescue them.
Wallace said ‘things have got to a point where businesses are no longer passive but are standing up to demand the services they pay for’.

However, there are still business people from so-called third world countries interested in investing in South Africa and in Northern KZN in particular, hence, she said, the need to maintain infrastructure.
On a positive note, Wallace noted that Alfred Duma Municipality (Ladysmith) has no Eskom debt, unlike Endumeni who owes over R200 million to the power utility.

Willie Steenberg of the Endumeni Chamber of Business thanked Wallace for her dedication and welcomed the idea of an affiliation with the Northern KZN Chamber.
“In Endumeni, we are all volunteers, so we cannot get to all the work needed to be done. To join a bigger chamber will lend strength to our arm.”

Asked from the floor what feedback the chamber and residents association had received from the recent ‘Mayor Ride-Along’, where new mayor Mcebo Mkhize was shown the bleak state of the municipal infrastructure, Steenberg said he was ‘extremely disappointed’.
“We saw so many problem areas, yet we have no feedback on one. Meantime, the deterioration is continuing, by-laws are not implemented, and people are desperate for change.”