Municipality urges communities to take charge of service delivery

The Elias Motsoaledi local municipality in Dennilton, Limpopo, has encouraged communities with service delivery challenges where there are no budget allocations, to take matters into their own hands to address them.

This is after the communities of Lenkwaneng and Thabakhubedu in Ntwane Village built a pedestrian and light vehicle bridge over a stream. The bridge was opened last week.

In 2020, Sowetan published a story detailing the struggles the community faced during the rainy season when the stream would flood and prevent pupils from getting to school.

The community came together and built the bridge after the municipality told them there was no budget to do so.

The residents contributed money to help build the bridge, slept at the construction site to make sure building material was not stolen and wrote to the SA Human Rights Commission to complain that the municipality was not helping them.

Elias Motsoaledi local municipality spokesperson Simon Makua said the municipality encouraged other communities to take charge of such initiatives with the collaboration of the technical team from the infrastructure department “when faced with challenges where there is no budget allocation to outsource the service”. 

“The municipality provided all the materials required for the low-level crossing and some community members who wanted to build the bridge joined hands with municipal officials to create that temporary low-level crossing voluntarily,” he said.

Ntwane Community Development Forum member Gideon Mathebe said the municipality had never had the bridge in their plans.

“The bridge has never been budgeted for. They always say they don’t have money. The only time they helped us was when we wrote to the human rights commission,” he said.

Residents named the bridge “Bakgalabje le Bakekolo”, which means elderly men and women, in honour of the older people in the community who spearheaded the project. Resident Mmule Tholo, 67, said the bridge was a testament to the community’s hard work as she and other elderly people danced with joy and ululated on it. Tholo was part of the group of elderly people who had worked alongside the construction workers to build the bridge.

“Every month end, I had to take a wheelbarrow and cross [the stream] with it to the other side to buy maize meal.

“When I came back my grandchildren would meet me by the stream, carry the maize meal over, then go back and fetch the wheelbarrow.

“I once lost my shoe in the stream as my foot was stuck. Luckily a man came to help me and carried me over. We worked hard for the bridge and contributed money every time cement was needed. We contributed R100 per house. I thank God that we have a bridge today,” Tholo said.

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