
Bethal residents complain about roads
'Somebody from the municipality even came here to look and take photos, but they have not done anything yet,' said a resident.
'When it rains, our street looks like a river, and you can barely drive here with a vehicle. If the municipality would just come to scrape the street once, it would make a big difference.'
Donald Green, the Govan Mbeki Municipality (GMM) spokesperson, said repairs to roads damaged during the recent floods are ongoing in Region 1 of Bethal and eMzinoni.
'The recent rains damaged some of the GMM's road infrastructure. The municipality understands the frustration and inconvenience caused by these road conditions to residents,' said Green.
'The mayor and municipal officials visited the affected areas in eMzinoni recently during the mayoral service delivery programme, Ijima lokuhlwengisa, to assess the damage caused by the rain and engage with the affected residents.
'This programme will continue until the end of April. The municipality is working tirelessly to repair some affected roads using existing resources.'
ALSO CHECK: Thomas Banga wants to uplift Evander
ALSO CHECK: DA in Govan Mbeki Municipality calls for accountability over R16m irregular expenditure
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The Citizen
2 days ago
- The Citizen
24 hours in pictures, 11 August 2025
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IOL News
10-07-2025
- IOL News
KwaZulu-Natal MEC appeals for flood victims to accept relocation offer amid housing crisis
The April 2022 floods left hundreds dead and caused a trail of destruction to infrastructure, businesses, homes, and communities. Image: Doctor Ngcobo / Independent Media The plight of over 150 flood victims in KwaZulu-Natal has reached a critical juncture following their eviction from the Bayside Hotel in Durban's CBD as provincial authorities grapple with a mounting housing crisis. Transport and Human Settlements MEC Siboniso Duma has made an urgent appeal for these individuals, which include vulnerable women and young children, to accept offers for temporary shelter provided by the department. The flood victims found themselves abruptly displaced when the provincial department could not sustain payment for their accommodation at the hotel. With a substantial allocation of R185 million intended for temporary housing for more than 1,200 families, the department now faces the grim reality of needing an additional R128 million to continue supporting these displaced communities. 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Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. 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IOL News
07-07-2025
- IOL News
We Are Drowning, Not Just in Water
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Would Mayor Hill-Lewis have shown up with a mop and a shrug?Or would we have seen a multi-million rand emergency intervention plan? Remember when mountain footage. Helicopters. Fire engines. Private sector coordination. Corporate donations. Blankets in abundance. The truth is that the DA governs for the few and lets the rest fend for Cape Town is built for tourists, wine estates, tech startups, and gentrified warehouses. Our Cape Town the other Cape Town gets flooded homes, broken promises, and budget underspending. Budgets Hoarded, Not Spent Here's what makes this all worse:The City of Cape Town had the money to prevent this. According to the Auditor-General's 2023/24 municipal report, the City failed to spend over R1.3 billion of its capital budget, much of which was earmarked for housing, basic services, and infrastructure maintenance. Backyard dwellers 250,000 strong and growing continue to be ignored in formal planning. No or limited upgrades. No or limited in-situ support. Just rising service charges and no relief. The Catchment, Stormwater and River Management unit reportedly exhausted its maintenance budget before winter even began. This is not an accounting oversight. It is a damning indictment of poor planning, weak foresight, and misplaced priorities. What do you call a government that lets predictable disaster unfold, year after year, without intervention? I call it negligent. I call it elite-serving.I call it the DA-led City of Cape Town. The Human Toll: Our Pain is Normalised In Langa, we met a family who hadn't slept in days. Their mattress was soaked. Their walls leaking. Their children coughing. They had logged a call with the City three weeks ago. No or limited response. In Mitchell's Plain, we spoke to backyarders who had used old tyres and buckets to build makeshift trenches. In most areas, community activists are doing what the City should be doing clearing drains, documenting hotspots, coordinating relief and food. They don't have a budget. They just have heart. Baie Trammaksi to all the relief agencies. People are suffering and exhausted. We Need Structural Change, Not Sandbags Enough with the with the deflection and Town doesn't need another DA press need structural transformation in how our city is governed: 1. Immediate Emergency Flood Plan for the Cape Flats Declare township flooding a local disaster. Allocate more emergency funds for water extraction, temporary housing, and food relief. Deploy more infrastructure repair teams to Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Nyanga, Phillipi, and similar hotspots. 2. Drainage and Stormwater Masterplan Review Conduct an urgent and full audit of all stormwater infrastructure in the City's poorest wards. Prioritise cleaning, upgrading, and repairing of the most vulnerable systems. Invest in retention ponds, wetland buffers, and nature-based solutions. 3. Rethink Urban Spatial Injustice Accelerate housing delivery, especially for backyarders and informal settlements. Enforce transparency and accountability on unspent housing budgets. Ensure that basic services drainage, sanitation, electricity reach all communities, not just affluent ones. 4. People First Budgeting End the annual underspending on infrastructure. Involve community forums and ward committees in participatory budgeting processes. Tie City budgets to social impact, not technocratic outputs. A Call to Capetonians: It's Time to Wake Up To my fellow Capetonians, I ask you to look beyond the headlines beyond the aerial flood images. This is not a weather is a political is about who the City chooses to protect and who it chooses to abandon. If the mountain burns, the whole of Cape Town when the Cape Flats floods, we are told to 'be patient' and 'wait for Phase 3.' 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