The South African Human Rights Commission hearings into the waterless plight of many communities are currently underway in uThukela District.
This comes after the DA in Uthukela laid its initial complaint with the SAHRC in August 2020. During the time, communities in Uthukela were under lockdown, stuck in a pandemic, and having to survive without water for many days on end.
The Uthukela District was failing to provide basic services to many communities in the region. At the time, Uthukela had been under provincial administration since 2016, but a Provincial ANC Government placing a District ANC Government under administration delivered little results. In fact the situation and the balance sheet just got worse by the month as cadre deployment hollowed out a once working institution.
The irony that has been lost on so many feasting ANC cadres is that Uthukela, and the Drakensberg Mountains within, are the water-basket of South Africa, and yet we can’t even supply water to our own communities.
The DA in Uthukela also approached Parliament earlier this year in its oversight role, with a petition signed by residents from all walks. We can only hope that the submissions to the SAHRC will lay bare the absolute travesty that is water and basic service provisions in the province.
We hope that the hearings’ findings will align itself with the daily struggle for dignity experienced by millions in the province. We hope that the findings will be another tool we can use to drive the urgency of the matter to Parliament. All interventions to date have delivered no improvements and we hope that these finding will be a wake-up call to both Parliament and voters.