The eThekwini municipality believes a recent fire at Ntuzuma water pump station may be part of a sabotage of the city’s critical infrastructure by officials who stand to benefit from water tanker tenders.
The Ntuzuma pump station 2 caught alight earlier this month, interrupting water supply to townships in the north of the city, mainly in parts of Ntuzuma, Inanda, KwaMashu and Lindelani.
On Monday, the city’s executive committee (Exco) agreed to redirect R15m from “various departments” for the urgent restoration of the pump station.
There seems to be a mafia kind of arrangement controlling certain activities around the city behind the scenes
— Bhekithemba Mvubu, human settlements and infrastructure committee chair
The city said funds would be redirected from a current project, which would not be completely halted but would not receive full allocations.
To ensure water supply to these affected communities while restoration efforts are going on, the city will install a standby generator and sort out the power supply to the pump station in what it called the “first wave” of fixing it.
However, the decision to release the funds was not agreed to without concerns from Exco members.
Mduduzi Nkosi, IFP caucus leader in eThekwini, said there were messages circulating before the fire at the pump station urging those with water tankers to be ready.
“After that [circulation of messages] this incident happened, which means that there are people who are attacking our infrastructure so that they could benefit through water tankers. It’s not only this issue, there are many wards that don’t have water because certain people knew where the valves were and how to close them so that we would be forced to use water tankers,” he said.
Bhekithemba Mvubu, chairperson of the city’s human settlements and infrastructure committee, said committee members shared similar sentiments about the suspected sabotage of infrastructure.
“There seems to be a mafia kind of arrangement controlling certain activities around the city behind the scenes. It looks like there is prima facie sentiments across the [Exco] members that there might be a well-organised effort to milk the city so that those who will be called to come in the time of emergency will benefit from a crisis they caused,” he said.
“We’re starting to get the sense that they are connected to people who are in the higher echelons of power, whether politically or within the officials.”
Mvubu said the alleged criminal activity might have gone on for a long time without any consequences and called for a harsh pushback against it.
“We are not going to be [cowards] and allow the city to be held to ransom by criminals who perhaps have been doing these activities for a very long time without any consequences. We must clamp down harshly because funds directed to deal with this crisis will be taken from other projects meant to deliver services to people,” he said.
Nkosi said if these allegations were not investigated thoroughly the people of eThekwini might end up without water.
“We know that it’s our own people that are doing that, our own officials,” Nkosi alleged. “If we’re not doing anything, we will keep on pumping money and they will keep on benefiting.”
Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda admitted they believed there was possible sabotage of infrastructure. He said the city had written to the State Security Agency (SSA) asking that it assist with investigations.
“We have requested SSA to assist us because they’ve got capacity of investigating such things, but the provincial head was changed and the new head also required to approve that report. We are expecting that in the near future we will get the report on the infrastructure sabotage on electricity, water and sanitation where we are experiencing most of the challenges,” he said.
The SSA had assisted the Ugu municipality before and Kaunda was confident eThekwini would also get assistance.
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