The Democratic Alliance has received a demand from the eThekwini Mayor’s Office that we remove our billboard exposing the City’s growing dependence on water tankers (view here).
Our response is simple. The billboard will remain.
The Mayor, City Manager and Head of Water and Sanitation appear on the billboard because the water crisis has worsened under their leadership. They are the senior political and administrative leaders responsible for ensuring that eThekwini’s water system works.
Under their watch, the City has become increasingly reliant on water tankers while approximately 13,000 active leaks waste 21 billion of litres of drinking water every month.
The billboard does not allege that these individuals are members of a mafia. It holds them politically and administratively accountable for the infrastructure collapse that has allowed tanker dependence, and the interests surrounding it, to flourish.
eThekwini municipality has an ongoing habit of spending public money on defending incompetence.
Instead of using public resources and official correspondence to fight a billboard, they should get to work fixing the pipes.
Residents do not need censorship. They need accountability. Above all, they need water in their taps.
The DA will not be intimidated into silence while families endure dry taps, leaking pipes and endless tanker queues.
On 4 November, the people of eThekwini can end this failure.
Stop the water tanker mafia. Vote DA for water in your taps.