The situation in Temba/Hammanskraal has gone back to normality after two days of unrest and mayhem. Yesterday the community of Temba went on a rampage intensifying their second day protest for clean water and better service delivery from the City Mayor, Solly Msimanga.
The community was enraged after the Mayor allegedly rejected their demand that he should come to Temba to address them on the continued water crisis. The Mayor allegedly refused citing incidents where he was previously held hostage by the community twice at Mandela Hall and at Sebothoma Hall and demanded instead that the community leaders should meet him in Tshwane on Friday.
The Hammanskraal Residents Forum (HRF) late last night issued a statement to suspend the shutdown in anticipation of the scheduled meeting with the Mayor on Friday.
“Those who will be blocking the roads and looting will be performing those acts in their own capacity as the shutdown is being suspended,” the forum said.
A community member said the shops are now open today and the taxis and buses started operating from 03:00 in the morning bringing the situation to normality.
Yesterday all roads were blocked with rubble by community members who said they’ve had enough with the water problems in Hammanskraal.
Just after the recent local government elections, the community of Temba was exposed to sewage coming out of their taps followed by extended water shortages that lasted for days.
Since then, the community has been riddled with numerous water problems including abrupt water supply cuts, water turning brown or white, water releasing a white foam when boiled and recently reports of listeria and cholera. The latter two were however reported false by the municipality. The community however complained that the water is not healthy for human consumption embarked on protest action.
The Political woes
The community has been in the cross fire between the ousted ANC administration and the current DA led administration accusing each other of non-delivery and sabotage respectively.
Hammanskraal is also one of the largest Zones in Tshwane that is seen as the ANC stronghold and king makers at ANC conferences with a larger voter registration population that is standing at 60 to 70 percent on the voters roll.
While he is the Mayor, this is a nightmare for Msimanga to win the hearts of voters in this ANC stronghold because the blame is on him for poor service delivery while his party is met with hostility.
The imposing of Thoko Didiza on the Tshwane voters and the ANC Region infighting during the previous local government polls, resulted in voters in areas like Hammanskraal staying away from the local government elections giving the DA an upper hand.
After the local government elections, the Hammanskraal Zone had eight ANC seats in council and donated six of their seats to DA dominated zones that did not qualify for seats in council. Two seats were donated to Inner City East Zone (Centurion), two to Inner City Central (Pretoria) and another two to the Inner City North West (Pretoria North) Zone.
This gave these Zones representation in council which could not happened was it not because of the Hammanskraal Zone generosity.
At ANC conferences, Hammanskraal is able to bring about 30 delegates at national conferences and just over 40 at Regional Conferences making the Zone a big player in swinging votes. One of the branches in Hammanskraal with over 1000 branch members, is able to bring 14 delegates to conference compared to branches in suburbs with about 100 branch members that qualify to send one or two members to conference.
That Solly Msimang, as a DA Mayor, is not welcome in Hammanskraal and other ANC strongholds, has turned these communities into political ball games which affects service delivery.
ANC activist in the Hammanskraal area recently chased away a DA Mayoral Council Member who was in the area to give out tittle deeds accusing the DA of hijacking a project that was started by the ANC.
Last night the community was gathered at the Temba police station demanding that the arrested community members, one woman and two men, be charged or be released.
A water truck was torched at Magalies Water Plant which resulted in Magalies also shutting down the water.
“The irony is that as we speak we do not have what we were fighting for because the water is shut down and the water trucks are not delivering water.
“We are worried about the elderly and the vulnerable because they do not have the means to buy water,” said one community member.
