If the people of Hammanskraal ever doubt how little their lives matter to those in power, they should remember this moment: the City of Tshwane says it could not blacklist Edwin Sodi’s companies because it could not find his address.
This is not because the law was unclear, and not because the evidence was weak, but because officials claim they could not locate a man who appears in glossy magazines, owns a high-profile Sandton nightclub and responds to WhatsApp messages from journalists.
Nearly 30 people died during the 2023 cholera outbreak linked to the failure of the Rooiwal wastewater treatment plant. The plant was supposed to be refurbished under a R291m contract awarded in 2019. The contractors failed and the project collapsed. Sewage flowed into the water system and families buried their loved ones.
Yet, three years later, no-one at the centre of this disaster has been meaningfully held to account.
Blacklisting exists for precisely this reason. It is meant to protect the public from companies that fail, lie, or enrich themselves while delivering nothing. National Treasury regulations allow the state to bar such companies from public work for up to a decade. Yet in Tshwane, accountability hit a wall when it reached a politically connected tenderpreneur.
To the residents of Hammanskraal, the city’s explanations sound like mockery. They are told about procedures, frameworks, legal opinions and internal audits. They are told the process was paused, restarted, reviewed and refined. What they are not told is why its urgency disappeared once bodies started piling up.
The truth is simple and ugly. When poor people get sick, the system moves slowly. When the well-connected are threatened, the system suddenly forgets how to walk.
Municipalities can trace indigent households, disconnect water, garnish wages and suspend grants with ruthless efficiency. But suddenly, when it is time to serve a blacklisting notice on a millionaire contractor, the man becomes untraceable.
This was not an administrative mishap but a choice — a choice to treat the deaths of ordinary people as collateral damage in the protection of elite interests.
The insult cuts deeper because the state has no trouble finding ordinary citizens when it wants to. Municipalities can trace indigent households, disconnect water, garnish wages and suspend grants with ruthless efficiency. But suddenly, when it is time to serve a blacklisting notice on a millionaire contractor, the man becomes untraceable.
Hammanskraal residents were forced to drink contaminated water. Blacklisting Sodi’s companies will not undo the harm and it will not bring back the dead. But failing to do so sends a devastating signal. It tells communities like Hammanskraal that their lives are negotiable and that justice stops where political power begins.
This is not just a governance failure, it is a moral one. And every day it continues, the state deepens the wound by claiming it cannot find an address to heal it.
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