The Eltivillas community is watching with an eagle’s eye to see whether the service delivery promised by the ANC in their election campaign will be honoured.

“You rallied for our vote, you have won the ward, now deliver the goods,” seems to be the general feeling. The ANC concentrated their campaign on Eltivillas by sending in the big guns, like Limpopo premier, Mr Cassel Mathale, on the eve of the election and Mr Matthews Phoza on May 12.

Ward 20, where Eltivillas is situated, went to the ANC. Their ward candidate, Mr Vincent Mhladisa, won the ward by 432 votes. The DA ward candidate, Ms Zaheerah Jooma, drew the majority of the votes at the show hall, but the Vleifontein ANC vote swung the scales to give Mhladisa the victory.

Although she was not voted in as ward councillor, Jooma is very concerned about the sewage problem on the Vondeling Road in the new extension in Eltivillas. Year in and year out, the sewage hazard has been brought to the attention of the Makhado Municipality by the community, the Soutpansberg Ratepayers Association and the Democratic Alliance. The national media got hold of the situation and the DA asked questions in parliament. Although a new waste water works is underway, due to all the pressure, Jooma was upset when she passed the Vondeling Road this week and stood at the sewerage dam, near the new residential area.

“This is still a health hazard and an environmental hazard. The sewage could seep into the ground and affect our borehole water. It is bad enough that our water is shut down most of the time; we do not need our boreholes contaminated,” Jooma said.

The next stop was a water leak in 2nd Street that had been wasting water for over a year. A concerned resident said that he had reported the leak to the municipality more than once. The municipality did come out to fix a leak elsewhere in the street. When the resident approached the workers about the leak he had reported, he was told that they could not give attention to that specific leak, because they were not ordered to fix that leak, which was not regarded as an emergency.

The condition of the roads is probably the biggest sore point in Eltivillas.

“We work hard and drive fancy cars and we hate Council if our cars get damaged,” one resident said. The condition of the roads in the residential area is one thing, but the potholes in the roads that used to be tarred roads in the Eltivillas industrial area are beyond description. A resident of Mokopane, who regularly visits Louis Trichardt and Eltivillas, Mr Clayton Smith, commented on the roads in the Eltivillas industrial area. “It is shocking, absolutely shocking!” Smith said.

Another businessman referred to the fact that R10m was budgeted for the retarring of the Eltivillas CBD and R7.5m for the building of roads in Eltivillas Extension 1, the so-called new extension. “R18 million for the roads is big business. We want accountability. We want every cent of the money’s worth spent on proper roads,” the businessman said.

“We don’t want the greater part of the R18 million landing in the pocket of some tender chummy,” Jooma said.