HA-MUDIMELI – As the Makhado Municipality is still struggling to find ways of effectively channeling service delivery and development within its area of jurisdiction, Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana and the MEC for Local Government and Housing, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, officially launched the inclusion of the municipality in a Project Consolidate Programme at Ha-Mudimeli last Friday.

Project Consolidate is a hands-on local government support and engagement programme, designed to assist 136 municipalities in delivering services as well as improving performance. During an interactive community-based meeting, also known as a municipal Imbizo, the mayor of the Makhado Municipality, Cllr RS Nkuzana, presented his municipality's action plan. Nkuzana said that, since they adopted a revenue recovery plan last year in October, when they were financially ailing, they are now on a good footing. “We also wanted to reduce the current municipal debtors book of R39,3 million by improving the payment rate in the 293 towns and Makhado by 30% at the end of 2005/6 financial year,” he said.

In terms of institutional arrangements, the mayor said that the council took a resolution on July 28 to restructure its administrative component by reducing the seven directors to four. “The staff was restrucutred and placed accordingly,” he claimed. Council’s media man, Mr Peter Magwala, was moved from corporate services to be director community services. Mr Masindi Mapholi is still director of technical services, while Mr Vic Viljoen is director of corporate services.

When asked who the director of finance was, Magwala said “there is someone acting”, but he did not reveal the person’s name. When asked if the employment equity plans developed by the municipality were similar to the department of labour's employment equity act, Magwala said that they are similar as it also emanates from the employment equity act.

During the municipal imbizo, residents of Ha-Mudimeli and other wards raised their concerns about the backlog of service delivery, such as water, electricity, housing, gravelling and grading of roads. According to Mr Rackson Khangale, chairperson of the civic association at Ha-Mudimeli, residents are complaining about the monthly fee (R43,89) for electricity at the municipality because the majority are unemployed. “We want the municipality to initiate a project to purify and supply us with water from the Nzhelele River. We do not want boreholes, but purified water from the river as it pains us to see a farmer utilising that water for his crops, while our taps are dry,” he said.

Residents also complain about a neighbouring farmer who is keeping lions on his farm. “Our lives are in danger, because sometimes we hear these dangerous animals roaring next to our villages,” one resident claimed. MEC Nkoana-Mashabane said that Project Consolidate was crucial as it was aimed at strengthening the capacity of municipalities to deliver services to communities. “This is an intensive campaign, targted at assisting certain municipalities to render services and we hope and believe that it will be a participatory programme to all our stakeholders to speed service delivery,” she said.

Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana made a blistering attack on trade unions and two local farmers. To the farmers, he said that water is a basic need that must be shared by all people. “We maintain that there must be one lion roaring (King Toni Mphephu Ramabulana) to ensure that people are living in peace and harmony, not the roaring of lions to endanger the lives of our people. We cannot allow people who are not subjects of the king to keep lions in order to eat our people,” he said.

Mdladlana said that trade unions must refrain from making him and his staff members its national shop steward. “We are not a trade union. I do not want trade union leaders on television, but at the farms, mobilising more farm workers. We want to fight farmers who are still exploiting our people, but it also hurts when farm workers are scared to break their silence in the presence of the farmer,” Mdladlana said.