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- A Stuijt
- Retired South African medical journalist, ex-Sunday Times of Johannesburg.
Thursday, 21 August 2008
South African legal ratepayers' revolt is growing fast
10:34 | 
Posted by
A Stuijt |
GETTING THOSE ANC-FATCAT SNOUTS OUT OF THE FEEDING TROUGHS PROVES REMEDY FOR FAILING MUNICIPAL SERVICES...Picture: SA has 231 wall-to-wall municipalities, and only a few are not run by ANC-councils. But ratepayers are now getting these ANC fatcats' snouts out of these feeding troughs by declaring legal disputes - and withholding their taxes. Some 30 municipalities now are run by independent ratepayers' committees instead...
Aug 20 2008 - DEWETSDORP. Yet another Free State town is poised to declare a formal dispute against their useless ANC-run municipality, Volksblad newspaper reports.
This will be the 16th municipality in this province alone to do so - and another 170 of South Africa's 231 municipalities are now also poised to follow suit. It's becoming a nationwide revolt against ANC-fat cats from the taxpayers' feeding-troughs.
Picture: This irate Randburg ratepayer set to and fixed some very dangerous potholes in front of his property himself because cars and trucks crashed there regularly, yet ANC-fatcat municipal officials were just ignoring such potholes for months...
SA taxpayers gave R 571.8 billion to the 2007/8 budget - and increasingly, taxpayers demand to know exactly what the ANC-fat cats running around in their big Mercedeses and living in their luxury houses and wearing expensive bling, are doing with all their money: they are not spending it on municipal services, anyway... the country's streets are potholed and trashed, the water supply is so dangerous it's killing babies and wildlife, the electricity network is collapsing...feral dog packs and outof-control rat populations kill hundreds of people with rabies, and the local food supply is rapidly running out.
But while the black township residents mainly have outbursts of angry, helpless rage, in which they often attack the worst fat-cat ANC-councillors and go about torching and sabotaging government-properties and power-stations, the more organised ratepayers are forming themselves into legal management-committees and declaring legal disputes so that they can start running things themselves.
And it's working: dozens of municipalities who have now declared their independence from fatcat-ANC councils over the past two years report enormous improvements, within just months.
These potholes in Secunda were a source of great mirth to the local kids, but the adults weren't amused...
There were even some humorous incidents during these ratepayer-revolts: the Louis Trichardt Ratepayers Association last month held a formal funeral procession through the downtown area with a coffin and a hearse, declaring the 'death of all municipal services". This is only one of the many municipalities which have now seen a legal dispute declared against them by the local ratepayers.
This growing nationwide 'legal declaration of independence against greedy local ANC-fat cats' has the ruling party hierargy increasingly edgy: their parliamentary chairman in charge of local services even whined in parliament this week that while the ratepayers 'have the legal right' to withhold their taxes and start running their own municipal services with that money instead -- this 'just makes matters worse'. Indeed: it's making matters worse but only for the ANC fat-cats who now see their lucrative incomes removed.
Once a dispute has been declared, it give tax- and ratepayers the legal right to form their own 'town-management committee' with legal rights to deposit their taxes into a seperate bank account and start running their own municipal affairs.
They also have the right to contract out municipal services and to take over the municipal offices - which are taxpayer-owned. One municipality in the Eastern Cape recently sued in the High Court and won the right to occupy the local municipal offices and eject the ANC-council officials, and this has now set the legal precedent for the rest of the country.
South Africa has border-to-border municipalities - thus if this movement takes hold and spreads, it could also mean that the entire country's municipal services eventually could be run by little ratepayer-committees.
This was confirmed by Mr Jaap Kelder, magement-committee member of the National Union of Taxpayers, who said there are another 170 municipalities countrywide also heading towards declaring disputes within the next few months...
DeWetsdorp's ratepayers' association chairman Ebie Ebersohn said they have now filed a formal dispute-notice with the so-named 'Naledi-Municipality' listing all their demands for improvements. By law, the municipal officials now have 21 working days to respond officially by correcting each of the complaints listed in their formal petition.
"If they fail to do so, we will have no other solution other than declare a formal dispute against the municipality.' He said he was sorry matters had to get this out of hand ' but this is our only solution because the municipality's service-delivery is clearly not going to get any better, it's getting worse'.
There's the myriad of usual complaints also heard in most other ANC-run regions: ranging from irregular water-supplies, the derelict and unhealthy waste-dump, potholed, dangerous streets, the neglected cemetery, faulty, irregular and confusing municipal billing to ratepayers.
"The municipality recently allegedly had spent R3-mllion on a new sewerage system which doesn't work...' Ah yes - taxpayers elsewhere are also noticing such odd discrepancies...
The ANC also is finally sitting up and taking notice of the growing rate-payers' revolt, with senior ANC-MP Lechesa Tsenoli - who chairs the portfolio committee for provincial- and local governments -- criticising the entire ratepayers' revolt in a sharply-worded statement on Tuesday. Parliamentary reporter Antoinette Pienaar cited him as saying that 'the ANC condemns these attempts to withhold rates and taxes from municipalities by residents unhappy about service-delivery.'
He acknowledged that it was their legal right to do so - but claimed that it 'merely worsened the problems they were complaining about'.
He clearly doesn't know what he's talking about: those municipalities which have already declared their independence from greedy ANC-fat cat municipal officials, are now thriving it is report, with their services restored and running well - even for the many tens of thousands of township residents who pay no taxes at all.
http://www.news24.com/Die_Volksblad/Nuus/0,,5-83_2379762,00.html
SOURCES FOR THE ABOVE
Infrastructure collapse nears in SA as municipal engineers quit country enmasse
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/alertsonhealth.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=4182&LastModified=4675679675868000023
Rabies kills hundreds in SA: thousands of feral dog packs
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/alertsonhealth.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=3620&LastModified=4675638841755150549
Pretoria Streets Trashed:
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/alertsonhealth.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=4814&LastModified=4675672691455705834
Cancer warning: Pretoria water polluted with dangerous chemicals, radiation:
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/alertsonhealth.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=3793&LastModified=4675666488024957168
Cholera in Vaal river endangers tens of thousands:
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/alertsonhealth.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=4209&LastModified=4675666487859946115
Johannesburg water supplies polluted with sewerage
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/alertsonhealth.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=3648&LastModified=4675671283988019172
Unsafe water kills hundreds of babies in Eastern Cape
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/alertsonhealth.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=4639&LastModified=4675671283695818231
SA's collapsing electricity grid:
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/alertsonhealth.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=3209&LastModified=4675670735204220013
45,000 Griquas in Kokstad face life-threatening water shortages because of Supermax-prison
:http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/civilrights.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=3567&LastModified=4675631166999232136
Famous Kruger Park animals dying from chemical poisoning of rivers:
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/alertsonhealth.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=3810&LastModified=4675638434816045726
Angry black residents torch state properties:
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/civilrights.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=4488&LastModified=4675667444067815534
Angry black residents torch state properties
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/civilrights.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=4329&LastModified=4675664010230518169
Cops shoot crowds during anti-ANC protests:
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/civilrights.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=4112&LastModified=4675658717805091770
Black township rioters accused of 'racism' for opposing ANC-councillors:
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/civilrights.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=3796&LastModified=4675640775834699655
2007/2008 budget:
http://www.sabcnews.com/economy/business/0,2172,166851,00.html
Black resident in Soweto to BBC camera: things were better during apartheid:
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/civilrights.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=4198&LastModified=4675661230574298910
ANC-elitist runs amok at Afrikaans high school:
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/civilrights.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=3916&LastModified=4675643672216169332
Irate ratepayers declare dispute plans in 130 failing municipalities:
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/lawjustice.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=4660&LastModified=467567746285005
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