DA slams Free State municipalities for service delivery protests

The ongoing dysfunctionality of the Free State local municipalities has led up to 215 service delivery protests for the past three years, between April 2020 to November 2023.

According to MEC for Community Safety, Roads and Transport, Maqueen Letsoha-Mathea, the statistics show that a total of 69 of these protests were specifically associated with issues around the delivery of water, a basic human right that is entrenched in our constitution.

It was reported that during these protests, eight people were injured and property worth R51 426 000 was vandalized.

According to Democratic Alliance (DA) in Free State, the police resources that should have been used to fight crime were ruined.

“Furthermore, the ANC politicians who should be held accountable for the poor services, escaped from the riots. SAPS were left with the culpability of the tedious work of a failing democracy,” DA’s Free State Premier candidate Roy Jankielsohn said.

”It is a poor reflection on the governing party that our men and women in blue have become face of government.

While the ANC-led government is vocal in other conflict areas of the world, the Free State is becoming a war zone,” says Jankielsohn .

Jankielsohn hold that deployed cadres persist in denying communities their basic rights to regular and safe supplies of water in their house. “While raw sewage runs through yards, streets and into rivers.”

The victims of water-related sabotage, water tanker and construction mafias operating across the province are households, schools, hospitals, clinics and businesses.

“While the water and other service delivery wars are fought between the SAPS and deprived communities, ANC politicians are vocal about similar deprivation and human rights abuses in other parts of the world.

Citizens of the Free State must use the democratic system to dismiss the corrupt ANC Cadre, and replace them with a sound track record of a clean governance and sound service delivery,” added Jankielsohn.