Cape Town -- Desperate residents of Kannaland Municipality, who are already weathering a lack of service delivery due to political instability, have had their water cut off intermittently over the last week.
Now panicked consumers have flocked to shops, frantically emptying shelves of bottled water.
Deputy mayor Werner Meshoa attributed the water cuts to a “bone dry climate” and “blackouts”.
“It’s a lack of rain not service delivery ... load shedding is also to blame,” said Meshoa.
“We did not receive a lot of rainfall over the past few weeks.”
Angry residents said water cuts are among a string of poor service delivery issues.
“We’ve been patient for too long ... not a droplet of water in our area, and it’s almost 24 hours later,” said Jadri du Plessis-Pollock.
Another resident Lezanne Roelofse said: “I sent a WhatsApp (to a councillor) as we, in Nissen Street, also don’t have access to water ... they just said my query is being looked into and they apologised for the inconvenience.”
Carina Marais, also a resident, said they’re only informed of a water outage “20 minutes before the time”.
Civil society group, Action Society’s Ian Cameron said it scandalous that a group of self-righteous political hacks “can’t even produce water“.
“It’s shocking and we will intervene ... this is what you get when you have a rapist as a mayor and a fraudster as your deputy,” said Cameron.
GOOD’s Brett Herron called on MEC for Local Government Anton Bredell to intervene “immediately”.
“It can’t go on like this, Anton should step in ... Kannaland residents are not receiving the service (they) deserve,” said Herron.
Bredell previously told Weekend Argus that he can only place Kannaland under administration “as a last resort”. He said a plan to turn the municipality was underway.
Political instability has rocked the municipality this year beginning with the ousting of Meshoa and Donson in January following the revelation of their previous convictions for fraud and rape respectively, only for the pair to be re-elected in October
The Garden Route District Municipality said it is looking into possibly declaring a local drought disaster necessary, be it for one area, a few or the entire region.
“We also need municipalities to state if they support the (district) to become a water services authority or not because if we have their support we will stand a greater chance to become one and will be able to act more pro-actively to safeguard the region from water-related disasters,” said Booysen.
“Over the past few months, the region grappled with below-normal rainfall patterns. Severe drought in particularly the Klein Karoo, vandalism and theft all over the region and other challenges have left many municipalities focusing (on) damage control.”
Weekend Argus.