[ad_1]
Three of South Africa’s biggest cities have been thrown into chaos in the past few weeks, with Cape Town, Joburg and Tshwane all suffering from various crises that are hurting residents and bringing service delivery to a halt.
The most widespread issues are illegal strike action taking place in both Cape Town and Tshwane – while Joburg is still recovering from an explosion that hit the city in July, amid allegations of its finances teetering on collapse.
The Western Cape government has condemned widespread violence and destruction caused by taxi drivers and their respective associations this past week, as the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) ignores calls to end the chaos.
The strike took off on Thursday (3 August) when Santaco announced it would suspend all operations with immediate effect following clashes with the city’s law enforcement. The city impounded minibus taxis earlier in the week, which led to protests from drivers.
Since then, violence has broken out in the city and critical services – like healthcare and education – have been disrupted.
The city recorded numerous incidents, including:
- Four Golden Arrow buses torched
- Four private vehicles torched
- Two trucks torched at a City depot along Govan Mbeki Road
- City vehicle hijacked in Samora Machel
- Taxis blocked the highways
- Shooting at Philippi railway station
- Stoning of vehicles at Govan Mbeki and Duinefontein Road
Authorities have arrested at least 35 people connected to the violence, but the strike continues unabated. The strike has disrupted public transport and bus services, Eskom call-out services, community health services and clinics, as well as preventing infrastructure teams from reaching faults.
“Unfortunately, the minibus-taxi industry has reneged on commitments to finding a peaceful resolution to the strike, which has seen an increase in disruption and violence early this morning at the start of a new work week.
“It is absolutely tragic that thousands of households cannot earn a living and are prevented from commuting to work, and even to school, because of the sustained attacks on other public transport services across the city. There can be no discussion or negotiations for as long as the violence and intimidation continues,” the city said.
Western Cape premier Alan Winde has called for an end to the strike and violence and is reportedly considering getting the South African National Defence Force in to quell the protests.
Tshwane services slow
Another city hit with slow service delivery due to strike action is the City of Tshwane, which is seeing a protracted strike over wages continue into the new week.
Strike action by public servants hit the city last week after the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) launched the protests. The workers are striking against a planned 0% increase for workers.
The city has been emphatic that there is no money for wage hikes and called on workers to assist the city in turning its finances around and dig the city out of its hole. However, workers would not have it and are demanding increases.
While the city has a court order declaring the strike illegal, workers have not returned to their posts and continue to intimidate others from working. As a result, the city is now giving striking workers the boot.
“The City of Tshwane has drawn a line in the sand by issuing 38 dismissal letters to employees who participated in the unlawful and unprotected strike action. More dismissal letters will be issued to the striking employees,” it said.
The city also issued 89 dismissal letters to electricity switching teams over the weekend for failure to perform their duties. The electricians claimed that the reason why they failed to execute their duties was due to intimidation by striking colleagues.
Despite the firings – and threats of more to come – the strikes have continued, with services suffering as a result.
As with Cape Town, city services are unable to attend to infrastructure issues, while refuse is still not being collected in some parts of the city.
“While it is difficult to confirm when normal services will be restored at this stage, the city commits to providing regular updates on developments regarding the full restoration of services,” it said.
Joburg finances questioned
While the City of Joburg has been on top of the massive explosion that rocked Bree Street near the end of July, questions still linger over the exact cause and culprits, while leaders remain under pressure to ensure that the same doesn’t happen again.
Rough estimates for repairs related to the explosion – reportedly caused by a methane gas build-up that ignited – currently sit at R178 million. This estimate might change once the city receives the detailed designs for the entire project.
The Democratic Alliance has warned, however, that the city is not standing on secure financial footing – warning that the infrastructure backlog is vast and that a recent downgrade from A+ to A by credit ratings agency GCR Ratings spells bad news for its coffers.
The city councillor for finance, Dada Morero, has assured that the city’s finances are “resilient” in spite of the downgrade. However, the DA’s leaders in the city have characterised this as out-of-touch.
“A city with an infrastructure backlog in the hundreds of millions, will undoubtedly require loans to ensure continued service delivery. The downgrade means that it becomes very difficult for the city to get and repay loans. The current executive has, in all practical senses, made another funding model for the metro more difficult to come by,” the party said.
The party flagged rising irregular and wasteful expenditure in the city as a key concern. Meanwhile, the city itself is launching investigations into claims that officials were instructed to finance the ANC Youth League conference through one of the city’s entities.
Read: Taxi strike hits Eskom
[ad_2]
Source link