‘God must take me,’ an elderly Makhanda woman cried out when NGO Gift of the Givers left town after a R10 million row over a water project.
Residents of Makhanda, formerly known as Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, have called on government to intervene in what they call a “broken town” in the throes of a water crisis.
According to the Unemployed People’s Movement, a group founded in the university town, the municipality has been incapacitated by corruption for years, leading to severe service delivery backlogs. “The ANC could not accept that a charity could succeed where they had failed. Now Gift of the Givers has to leave and we again must be subjected to dry taps and contaminated water,” he said.According to the municipality, the project was embarked upon as an “initiative” of council speaker Yandiswa Vara.
“In October last year, the department informed us that they would assist drought relief efforts by funding the drilling of boreholes,” said Makhanda spokesperson Anele Mjekula. But according to GG founder Imtiaz Sooliman, after bringing in specialist hydrologist Gideon Groenewald to successfully drill 15 boreholes, test water and install filtration systems, government told them it could only pay companies from services rendered.Sooliman said the group was told by the department that various companies would be paid for work he claims was done by them to the tune of R10 million.
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