The Hammanskraal water crisis: How political unity achieved the impossible – Jordan Griffiths

Key topics.Hammanskraal water crisis: Decades of mismanagement, corruption, and a 2024 cholera outbreak.Cross-party cooperation: DA and ANC leaders collaborated to build a modular water plant.Political betrayals: Mayor Brink ousted by ActionSA amid ongoing governance challenges..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..The seventh BizNews Conference, BNC#7, is to be held in Hermanus from March 11 to 13, 2025. The 2025 BizNews Conference is designed to provide an excellent opportunity for members of the BizNews community to interact directly with the keynote speakers, old (and new) friends from previous BNC events – and to interact with members of the BizNews team. Register for BNC#7 here..By Jordan Griffiths*.I spent seven years in the Mayor's office in Tshwane, three as a policy advisor and four as the Chief of Staff. During this time, I got a front row seat to the failure, frustration and tragedy surrounding the Rooiwal Wastewater Treatment Plant and the provision of clean water to the people of Hammanskraal..I was there, at the time when in 2016 Mayor Solly Msimanga the first Democratic Alliance (DA) mayor to unseat the African National Congress(ANC), prioritised the funding for the refurbishment of Rooiwal, after two decades of neglect, and the hope that decision brought. I was there in 2019, when under Mayor Stevens Mokgalapa another DA mayor it emerged that officials "Sodi's blessers" as the Sowetan labelled them, awarded the tender to a consortium which included Black Head consulting, a consortium which would later abandon the project. Dashing hope and forcing a restart in the project. Current Action SA Mayor Dr. Nasiphi Moya, was Mokgalapa's Chief of Staff at the time. She would later serve as Mayor Cillier Brink's deputy before betraying him..I was there when the cholera outbreak arose just as Mayor Cilliers Brink was elected in 2024. How we spent every single day in meetings for weeks trying to establish its source and prevent its spread. I was with him in the car when a politically mobilised mob attacked both of us as he attempted to visit affected families. And I personally took responsibility for the individual reports that were drafted to assist the families of those who died during this tragic time. Over 20 reports, the estimated number of deaths of the outbreak was placed at 32..I was there..But I was also there for the breakthrough, one of the rare and spectacular moments for a political staffer. When Mayor Cilliers Brink and Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu came together to resolve the Hammanskraal water crisis. When finally, a clear and tangible project was set which would involve the construction of a package plant by Magalies water which would come online in October 2024. Before this happened, Brink would be betrayed by Action SA to remove him as Mayor in September 2024..Read more: Tshwane: The ESKOM debt, the water crisis, the new Mayor's 100-Day Action Plan….It's worth emphasizing that I had been in the Mayor's office for so long and seen such continuous failure in Hammanskraal, that I myself had little faith this would succeed. For years, officials had informed political leadership that the only solution to the Hammanskraal crisis was the refurbishment of Rooiwal, a project which ran over multiple years and would cost billions. With the likelihood that entrenched water tanker interests would remain in the area for many years, costing R5 million a month and escalating..When Brink first took office just before the cholera crisis and asked me how we resolve Hammanskraal. I bluntly told him we couldn't until Rooiwal was refurbished and the best we had was water tankers. It's all I knew. He didn't take me at my word and during a Water and Sanitation workshop at the start of his term, he pulled the National Minister Senzo Mchunu aside and pushed for a solution. Minister Mchunu was an ANC minister and this cooperation almost forwarded the later Government of National Unity..So, when he returned to the office after meeting with National Minister for Water and announced that in one year a new plant could be built to pipe clean water directly to the residents, I simply could not believe it. In fact, I was totally sceptical and already thinking about the potential risks that could arise should this promise not to materialise. Furthermore, this was an ANC Minister working to assist a DA mayor, I was immediately suspicious..The Rooiwal plant is the point at which most of the wastewater generated in Tshwane is treated. From Rooiwal, the water is released into the Apies River for downstream purification at the Temba the water plant that supplied residents of Hammanskraal. As the Rooiwal plant deteriorated, so it polluted the Apies River, making it more difficult for the Temba plant to ensure potable water was supplied. .Read more: Herman Mashaba: The DA negotiates like SA is a one-party state….As far as 2004 the city's water masterplan recommended Rooiwal's upgrade. When the first environmental citations were issued against the city in 2011, the plan had still not been implemented. The local ANC leadership in the city during these years had never prioritised the plant..Solly Msimanga a DA mayor, elected in 2016, was the first leader of the city who actually ensured that it was prioritised in the capital budget. But actually, it was already too late. The plant was overloaded, the water to Hammanskraal was undrinkable and water tanker interests were already in place..The notion that a modular plant could effectively sideline this infrastructure had never been remotely considered. Thus, aside from the technical innovation of a modular treatment plant of this size, what makes the Hammanskraal clean water project remarkable was that it was devised by two politicians, the one a DA mayor, and the other an ANC national minister, who assumed the success of a shared project. This was the best version of what a 'government of national unity' could look like, even before such a thing was delivered by the 2024 general election. .The first phase of a project to deliver clean water to Hammanskraal residents is a significant achievement, showing that despite party political differences and intergovernmental turf wars, some politicians can in fact get things done. .That breakthrough, excepting disaster or incompetence by the now locally led ANC coalition with their Action SA mayor in charge of Tshwane, gives Hammanskraal residents the first credible prospect of clean water in their taps. For Tshwane's hard-pressed ratepayers, it also promises to eliminate the exorbitant cost of permanently deployed water tankers. .In September last year, Brink was ejected from office by his own coalition partner ActionSA. In exchange for switching sides to an ANC coalition that also includes the EFF, ActionSA received the city's mayorship. Dr Nasiphi Moya, who had served as Brink's deputy mayor for eight months, will be cutting the ribbon on a project delivered by others. But even that false ending doesn't take away from the remarkable work that was done in Hammanskraal..No amount of political grandstanding on this matter can change the facts on who the led the charge that would ultimately resolve this issue. It was Mayor Cilliers Brink and National Minister Senzo Mchunu..I was there..Read also:.TRIBE VIBE: Cilliers Brink ousted as Tshwane MayorAction SA's crossroads: Progress or political gamble in Tshwane?SA water crisis: "A massive avalanche" ANC govt can't stem….*Jordan Griffiths was the Chief of Staff in the City of Tshwane under Mayor Cilliers Brink

The Hammanskraal water crisis: How political unity achieved the impossible – Jordan Griffiths

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