Women strip in protest over water
2012-06-07 14:25
Mbombela - Residents of Giyani Section F have passed a vote of no confidence against their ward councillor, Abraham Manganyi, as they continue to suffer water shortages.
Residents marched to the Giyani municipal offices to hand over a memorandum demanding water and other services on Tuesday.
“We’ve tried to engage (Manganyi) several times to try to get answers regarding water problems in our section, but he called the police on us,” said community representative David Magagani, who read out the memorandum.
“Since the councillor is not accessible and calls the police on us when we try to engage him in talks, we have passed a vote of no confidence in him and his ward reps,” he added, to the applause of community members.
Distress
Some of the female marchers stripped until they were half naked to demonstrate their distress at not having water.
The marchers sang: “Abraham! Hina hi khome ku tika! (Abraham we’re having a hard time).
In the memorandum, the community insists that they don't want water tankers. They say they want running tap water.
They also want electricity and for residential sites to be demarcated.
They gave the municipality 14 days to respond.
“We’re tired of being told to wait for the Nandoni water project. We need water now,” shouted one resident, Rosina Baloyi, before the memorandum was handed in to Giyani municipality.
Giyani mayor Pat Hlungwani, accompanied by his executive staff, received the memorandum and promised to address the grievances as a matter of urgency.
“We won’t wait for the time you gave us to elapse, we will come to address your situation as soon as possible,” he said.
This is the second protest march by residents of Giyani within the past two weeks.
Recently, residents of Giyani's Mountain View area also demanded water. They took their grievances directly to the Vhembe district municipality.
