The top officials, councillors and SAMWU members in Makhado Municipality must refrain from deploying friends and relatives in municipal positions as a matter of urgency, warned the Zoutpansberg Development Community Forum (ZCDF).
Members of the ZCDF took to the streets on Friday, 24 June, and marched to the Makhado Show Grounds. They wanted to deliver a memorandum of grievances to the mayor, who was delivering his budget speech, but were stopped by the police.
The ZCDF applied for permission to hold a protest march the day before, but this was declined. The protesters were not allowed inside the show grounds.
The ZDCF's main grievances, as contained in their memorandum, centre around allegations of corruption and nepotism by the municipal manager, councillors and SAMWU officials. The forum members are also unhappy about the way tenders are awarded, power cuts and the shortage of water. They demand an investigation into allegations of corrupt employment practices, and that political appointments must be stopped, saying that employment should be based on merit and not on party affiliation.
The chairperson of the ZDCF, Mr Patrick Sikhutshi, said residents had started the protest after reaching their limit with corruption and the lack of basic services. He claimed they had proof that people were paying bribes for certain posts. "All is definitely not well in the municipality. We demand that this process of interviewing and short-listing stop, because the municipality is not doing its job."
Sikhutshi said that unemployment and poverty would continue to rise until people who were holding senior positions in the municipality and other public entities ceased to serve their own personal interests. He said that after they were denied permission to deliver the memorandum, the allegations had been reported to law enforcement, who were busy with the matter.
One of the residents at Madombidzha, Mr Solly Mboyi, agrees that nepotism is one of the main reasons that the municipality has become so dysfunctional. "For years now we have been diligently voting and voting for the ANC, but it is now clear that this organisation does not care about us," he said. "We will bring this municipality down. We cannot allow ourselves to be made fools by people we put into power, only to [see them] eat the money earmarked for development," he said.
The chairperson of the Sinthumule-Kutama Concern Group, Mr Elijah Liremi, said the leader of the ZDCF, Patrick Sikhutshi, was misleading the community, because he was merely fighting for a political position. He accused Sikhutshi of not accepting the fact that he had lost during the local-government elections. Liremi said that his organisation had met with the municipality and were satisfied that the correct procedures were being followed when staff appointments were made.
The Makhado Municipality's spokesperson, Mr Louis Bobodi, said that the request by the ZCDF to march on June 24 had been denied because they had not met the necessary requirements. Bobodi said he could not comment on a memorandum they had not received.