DA says Rustenburg local municipality failed residents

The Rustenburg local municipality has blamed its service delivery challenges on insufficient resources.

This follows repeated concerns by residents about bad roads, persistent water and electricity outages and poor maintenance of public spaces.

Some residents have taken matters into their own hands in a last ditch attempt to fix their communities including Otukile Motshwaedi who spent over R200,000 transforming a neglected field into a user-friendly park.

Speaking on the sidelines of the ANC’s birthday rally in the north west this weekend Rustenburg mayor, Sheila Mabale Huma urged communities to continue playing their part.

"We are encouraging other community members to adopt a park, to take care of the other parks that are around, to take care of what belongs to them because as the municipality we are assisting but with the little resources that we have, we have a heavy number of parks that we have to develop.”

DA member and Rustenburg’s ward 16 Councillor Johan Cronje said that residents are not getting value from the municipality for the rates and taxes they pay.

"There’s been a complete and utter failure on the municipality’s side in maintaining its green spaces, roads and storm water. You’ve got civic organisations like our ward matters and they have been doing phenomenal work in my ward and across Rustenburg with cleaning and tidying up of areas so the municipality is definitely failing in that instance.”