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Afriforum vs Vhembe District Municipality

AfriForum again takes fight to VDM

Date: 02 October 2016 By: Isabel Venter

AfriForum are fed up with the Vhembe District Municipality (VDM) and are demanding immediate action.

Last week, the AfriForum branch in Louis Trichardt announced their intention to head back to the court room. They have instructed their lawyers to prepare new documents to take the VDM to court. This, explained local chairperson Mr Wally Schultz, was not a decision that the forum had taken lightly. In fact, said Schultz, AfriForum had been contemplating this step for quite some time now.

Schultz explained that AfriForum were after VDM’s blood due to the “unsecured and dysfunctional state of the town’s existing borehole infrastructure.”  While Afriforum were still busy with legal consultations, events were escalated by the discovery that most of the boreholes had been ransacked by plundering thieves.

“We warned the VDM time and time again that this would happen. Gates and doors left wide open, CCTV cameras disabled, and no sign of a single security guard left an open invitation to thieves,” said Schultz.

As to the guards, Schultz said the security company that the VDM had hired was left unpaid for six months. The owner then allegedly pulled his guards off the job when VDM told him that they would hire their own security guards. “I’m reliably informed that they [new security guards] were not paid either,” Schultz said.

The VDM is not serving their community and this, said Schultz, boils down to blatant criminal negligence. He added that AfriForum fears for yet another imminent water crisis. Apart from the fact that the pipeline from the Albasini Dam is neither repaired nor developed, said Schultz, there are no functioning boreholes. Either the boreholes are left in disrepair or those that are working are not linked to the various feeding reservoirs.

Currently the town relies on the borehole system to supply water when the Albasini pipeline is shut down for repairs. “The VDM took a week to discover the plundered boreholes - a week after I had opened a case with the SAPS. This is a visible demonstration of gross incompetence and criminal negligence on the part of our district municipality,” Schultz said. He said that this multi-million-rand robbery of the town’s water infrastructure could not go unpunished. “I have approached senior SAPS officials to drive the investigation of this crime and I have been assured that the police will undertake serious investigations with urgency,” said Schultz.

AfriForum indicated that they would update the public once the new court documents were ready to be served on the relevant parties.

 

 
 
 

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Isabel Venter

Isabel joined the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror in 2009 as a reporter. She holds a BA Degree in Communication Sciences from the University of South Africa. Her beat is mainly crime and court reporting.

 
 

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