The recent water crisis in Bronkhorstpruit has shown a brutal spotlight on the political and administrative leadership in Tshwane. Lead by ActionSA Mayor Nasiphi Moya with the support of the ANC and EFF the coalition. The city was found to be wholly incompetent in their management of water supply to the residents of Bronkhorstpruit.
To get the full picture on how the crisis unfolded the following timelines and facts are worth noting. And they start at the very beginning.
On 23 September according to the official logs at the Bronkhorstpruit Water Treatment Plant (WTP) the last dose of chlorine was applied to water that was being piped into people’s homes. At which point the plant no longer had any stocks of chlorine left. According to the Mayor at no point was she or anyone else in leadership warned this had happened.
Somewhat hard to believe, particularly if you consider that for a further three weeks water was then pumped out of the plant with all manner of bacteria and record high e.coli levels. Someone must have known at some level and done nothing.
By the end of September that water was no longer safe to drink and into October various residents from around the area started getting sick. The Department of Health (DoH) picked up more cases of gastrointestinal illnesses and immediately flagged the issue with the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) who began an investigation. Let me take a moment to acknowledge both these departments in the way they traced and reacted to the issue as the data became available to them.
It was the Department of Water and Sanitation that established the Bronkhorstpruit plant was no longer using chlorine, conducted an investigation and went there to check the logs.
On Thursday 15 October they called an urgent meeting with Moya to discuss the findings and raise the alarm, but the Moya could not attend the meeting. At that point it was clear the plant was distributing contaminated water.
It was only late on Friday 16 October in the afternoon when Moya finally made her way to the plant that she made an announcement that the water was contaminated and not fit for human consumption. She indicated that the plant had run out of chlorine “last weekend.” This was simply not true. At that point the plant had supplied unchlorinated water for three weeks. Not only had DWS notified the Mayor’s office of this the previous Thursday but a simple check of the plant’s log would have provided this information.
As the weekend came, more cases were reported with over 400 people ill, most of them children under the age of 4. By Monday 19 October, DWS had called an inter-governmental press briefing where the Minister lambasted Tshwane for failing to notify residents about the contaminated water. At this stage Mayor Moya had no choice but to face up to having failed to properly confront the crisis when it first appeared.
Since Monday there has been significant coverage on the issue, criminal cases have been opened, and various political parties have called for Mayor Moya to resign. There are two primary reasons behind this.
The first is that Moya placed herself and her office as the political authority over regional operations in the city which includes the operations at water treatment plants. She effectively positioned the reporting authority above the relevant Member of the Mayoral Committee and directed it to herself. In doing this it was her political responsibility to conduct regular oversight and get feedback on the operations at these plants. It is clear this never happened.
The second is that on Friday 16 October in addressing the media, one of two things must have happened. Either Moya lied about the duration that chlorine had been absent from the water at the plant, saying it was one week when in fact it was three. Or she failed dismally in her oversight duties to get a proper report that reconciles with the plant log on the chlorine treatment timetable. Regardless of which is true it is untenable for Moya to stay in her position.
This crisis has also brutally exposed how a coalition government with a minority political party at the helm is hopelessly out of their depth in dealing with such an issue. An experienced leader would have identified by last week that this was a massive crisis and gone into overdrive to address this issue.
It was thanks to the Department of Water and Sanitation that the testing took place and that data could be revealed to the public. And it was thanks to the Democratic Alliance who quickly read the situation for what it was and started raising the alarm.
It was only after the shock of Monday’s press briefing that it hit home to Moya and ActionSA that this matter was serious. A pity it required DWS to take them there. Moya simply has no control over the city nor an idea of what is important to residents. An obsession with arresting and bullying informal traders may seem good for the cameras but when electricity goes out for weeks on end or you distribute filthy water to residents, they remember and never forget.
[Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kitchen_water_tap_20190408.jpg]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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