Maila Mapitsane Village By Molamo Ngwaketsi Essseu

Maila Mapitsane played a key role during the apartheid era .It is a village where by comrades used to hold meetings at. Those meetings were held at Dipping section (Thabaneng ya dikgaka). It is a section that surrounded by two rivers without any proper access bridges.

We the people of Ga-Maila Mapitsane especially old people from Dipping,Magogo,Mashilo and Mankotane decided to form organization called Dimatane Community Organization, after realizing fruitless from our municipality (Makhuduthamaga Local Municipality).As an organization we started to engage with our councilor concerning poor service delivery i.e. water, access road, clinic and electricity. Our health is affected due to improper roads infrastructures and the fact that we do not have clinic in our ward. Our Councilor failed us and we decided to hand our grievances to a mayor, by then were Queen Mkhabela. We did not rely on them only; we started to do a bridge using our own expenses. After our completion we invited mayor to see what we did with a hope that will also commit her to help us, but instead she gave a loaf of bread to our hard-workers grand-fathers and mothers for job well done and did nothing. In 18 July during Mandela day a new elected mayor also destroy our only hands made bridge promised to rebuild it in one day, also but failed us. That was when a Roller Machine of our municipality disappeared; until to date is not yet found, by municipality did nothing about that issue. Our organization together with a community decided to stand up and march to the office of the mayor due to lose of Roller Machine and poor services delivery i.e. Road infrastructure, Water supply, Clinic and proper and supply of electricity

Road Infrastructure

Among other issues in our memorandum we mentioned that we need access road from Schonoord-Mashite to Ga-Maila, but instead municipality decided to start a project from Manganeng. We don’t know what informs them because we regularly uses Mashite road. They used to say together we can do more but suddenly they just do as they wish.

A project that we are talking about was for four months, 500 meters with an abnormal value of R3, 4 million. A project was started on the 13 of March 2013 which supposed to end on 13 of July 2013, but is still not yet finished. Nothing is going according to procedure, rates per hour of general worker according to department of Labor is R20,50,but they are paying R11,11.Again according to Makhuduthamaga Local Municipality 10% of the value of the contract must remain locally, but ten people were hired instead. As I mentioned that this project is only 500 meters which starts at another ward (ward 17) and ends there, but they forced to make a hand-over at ward 15 and employed community to go to work in ward 17.

Water Projects

As Dimatane Community Development Organization we started to engage with our municipality about a problem of water. We fought until they promised to supply water tanks every Thursday. Even though they were not doing it regularly but were better than before. In our march to municipality we also demanded that we need all unfinished projects in our community and measures even temporary connect and supply water to all community. Even though this issues was tried to being address but still have some challenges i.e. Outstanding Mankotane-Mashilo water project. Finished projects are not regularly productive; we sometimes get a shortage of water without a valid reason.

 Clinic

Our village (Maila Mapitsane) is central location in our ward which consists of mountainous areas such as Mohlakaneng , Hoepkraans and Magolego.Travelling costs, difficulty of accessing clinic at night (because of lack of transport and communication infrastructure) deny our communities access to health care even primary health care, the size of our ward and our socio-economic condition make our ward to deserve a clinic operating 24 hours. On this issue of demanding a clinic nothing yet had being promised. Municipality responded that it is not their responsibility; we must consult Department of Health for more information

Electricity

We had a frequent recurring of drip off due to rain, wind and even nothing and that drip offs cost us a lot of damages on electrical appliance and food stuff. We tried to resolve this issue by writing a letter to ESKOM Head Office, even though we are not sure but it seems a problem has been resolved. We also demanded 171 units of electricity to outstanding households at Malaeneng section t
That was forfeited after we have been promised.

This municipality is taking us nowhere. What they do is to push their own interest instead of the interest of the communities. They used to say “ mmogo re ka kgona” but they just do as they pleased. We are not consulted, if they do consult us then this roads construction was supposed to start from Schonoord not Manganeng.The only way of servicing the communities is to work together with the communities and taking the greedy out of the office