CAWP: ANC Flushes the Hopes of Thousands of Desperate KwaMasiza Hostel Residents Down the Drain

COALITION AGAINST WATER PRIVATISATION
PRESS STATEMENT
Monday 2nd March 2009

ANC FLUSHES THE HOPES OF THOUSANDS OF DESPERATE KWA-MASIZA HOSTEL RESIDENTS DOWN THE DRAIN

WHAT KIND OF POLITICS AND ‘MORAL VALUES’ ARE ON DISPLAY WHEN THE THOSE MOST IN NEED ARE TOLD THEY CANNOT EVEN HAVE DECENT ACCESS TO THE MOST BASIC NEED OF ALL?

Last week the ANC-run Emfuleni Municipality, together with its water utility – Metsi A Lekoa – called a community mass meeting at Kwa Masiza hostel in Sebokeng. Residents came in their droves thinking that an announcement would finally be made about kick-starting the municipality’s long awaited water provision project for the hostel. Instead, local ANC councillor M. Maqutyana and municipal official responsible for water and sanitation, Jonny Thabane told residents that even those residents who are accessing municipally-supplied piped water must “conserve’ that water and not use more than 25 litres of water per person/per day. When residents protested, they told them to vote for the ANC again (for a fourth time) if they wanted to have long-term and sustainable access to water.

This is nothing less than a political, constitutional and moral outrage. Thousands of Kwa Masiza residents have been struggling for years to have decent access to what is a basic constitutional and human right. In 2002, the Municipality cut off all water access to the hostel in a brutal and inhumane attempt to evict residents illegally. This cut-off continued until early 2008 – in the process, causing massive infrastructural degradation/damage to water pipes and pressure valves and forcing residents to forage for water and live in horrendously unhygienic conditions – when hostel residents supported by CAWP succeeded in getting the municipality to restore water access to most of the hostel. The ANC municipality then promised residents that their constitutional and legislative rights to full water access, along with necessary infrastructural repairs, would be forthcoming.

Instead, a year later and in the midst of endless electoral promises about how the ANC will deliver and improve the poors basic needs/services, the hopes of the long suffering Kwa Masiza residents have, literally, been flushed down the drain. What kind of message is being sent when poor people (who have waited so patiently and with such dignity, for basic service delivery) are effectively told that they must continue to live in squalor and are not important enough to have basic sanitation, but be content to use the nearby veld? What kind of politics and political party is it that can be so cynical and lacking in human empathy?

CAWP, together with hostel residents and local community organisations in the Vaal will be meeting tomorrow (Tuesday 3rd March @ 17h00) at the Kwa-gas Community hall in Sebokeng hostel to decide on how to collectively respond to this outrage.

DOWN WITH POLITICAL AND ‘MORAL’ HYPOCRISY!

For further comment and/or information please contact:

CAWP organiser – Patrick “Patra” Sindane @ 073 052 7005