Politically-Driven, Violent Disruptions of Service Delivery Will be Met with Force

27 June 2019

The multi-party government in Johannesburg has experienced a sharp increase in the number of disruptions to its service delivery of capital projects.

These disruptions are being carried out by ANC aligned local business forums, who claim to have the monopoly on the construction work in these capital projects. As recently as yesterday, the ANC took the extraordinary step of issuing a statement of defending the local business forum opposed to the opening of the Montclare Opportunity Centre today.

The following capital projects have been violently disrupted recently:

- The refurbishment of Rea Vaya Station in Thokoza Park, Soweto.

- The Opportunity Centre in the Soweto Empowerment Zone, Diepkloof.

- The refuse collection rounds of Pikitup at the Zondi Depot in Soweto.

- The building of a balancing tank by Joburg Water at Bushkoppies.

- The Sewer Plant upgrades by Joburg Water at Olifantsvlei.

- The Eldorado Park Substance Abuse facility.

Most recently the City received threats of destruction of the Alexandra Opportunity Centre. These threats were based on the fact that the City did not locate our Opportunity Centre in owned by the local business forum that would have generated rent for them.

The disruptions are violent, often involving weapons, and are intended to intimidate service providers to the point where they leave the construction site, effectively halting progress.

It was clearly a practice of the City in the past that these local business forums were handed work in major capital projects. I am certain that this was just a part of the extensive political patronage network that characterised the previous administrations in Johannesburg.

We are committed to ensuring that contractors in these capital projects source local sub-contractors and labour. This is a principle that the multi-party government supports as a small yet important component of our work in providing economic opportunities. However, these disruptions are being carried out by politically aligned business forums who have locked ordinary people out of these opportunities and monopolise them for themselves.

Our multi-party government will not allow these patronage networks of the past to disrupt the service delivery that has been denied to communities over so many years. Service delivery cannot be disrupted and the actions of those who chose to stop work on our projects must be viewed as crimes against the residents of these communities. 

I have directed the City Manager to ensure that our Departments and Municipal Entities work with JMPD with the intention of safeguarding the work on these capital projects.

The JMPD must respond with force to violent disruptions of our capital projects. Depriving or delaying critical services to our communities warrants nothing less. It is time for their violence and criminality to be met with the requisite force to ensure that the best interests of our residents are protected. When confronted with armed business fora disrupting our projects and threatening the lives of contractors and our officers respectively, the JMPD must respond with commensurate force.

Criminal cases have been laid in respect of all disruptions, however I am gathering all of these cases and will be approaching the HAWKS to investigate these cases as organised criminal activity.

We will not stand by and allow politically connected criminality to prevent our multi-party government performing its mandate to correct decades of failed service delivery. We will reveal these business forums for what they are, politically connected patronage networks who demand enrichment through a monopoly on sub-contracting work in Johannesburg.

Issued by Olebogeng Molatlhwa, Acting Spokesperson of the Executive Mayor, 27 June 2019