ACTIONSA CORRECTS WATER TANKER LIES TOLD BT THE SAME PARTY THAT AWARDED THE CONTRACTS

Water tanker truck in Ikageng community hall in Mamelodi east photo by Dimakatso Modipa

By Michael Beaumont
ActionSA National Chairperson

Yesterday the Sunday Times published a series of claims relating to water tankers in the City of Tshwane and, in the process, managed to spectacularly misrepresent the facts.

Naturally, this was then driven on digital platforms by the DA, without any sense of irony that this is the party with questions that should be answered.

Water tankers are necessary because successive governments, including those of the DA, have failed for years to provide clean, safe drinking water to communities across the city.

This fact itself was conveniently absent from the article and the subsequent analysis.

The evidence is clear that the City has reduced expenditure from the levels seen during the DA’s administration and has begun a programme of procuring its own water tankers out of concern about what is clearly a water tanker mafia in municipalities.

These measures are already yielding savings of R12 million a month.

This is being done while expenditure on providing tapped water to communities is being increased, because water tankers must never be anything other than a short-term solution to a short-term problem in a functioning city.

Of greatest irony is that the article managed to omit the fact that the water tanker contracts in question were awarded under Cilliers Brink’s mayoralty in the 2023/24 financial year.

ActionSA nonetheless remains concerned by allegations that water tanker contracts, awarded by DA administrations, may have benefitted politically connected individuals.

These allegations risk distracting from the important work of the multi-party coalition government in turning around the city.

ActionSA welcomes the ongoing investigation by the SIU into the broader water tanker mafia that has taken root in Gauteng in particular and urges severe consequences for those involved in nefarious activities.

The claim that R777 million has been expended on water tankers is equally and demonstrably false.

The article failed to capture that R179 million paid in the 2024/25 financial year related to unpaid invoices incurred in the previous financial year under Brink’s mayoralty.

Again, it is ironic that it is Brink and the DA’s collapse of the city’s finances, to the point where the City was unable to pay its suppliers for work done worth R179 million, that must now be hung around the neck of this new government as it goes about fixing the broken city it inherited.

It has become laughable that Cilliers Brink’s mayoral campaign has essentially become an exercise in finger-pointing at matters that are themselves the consequence of his own failures, and those of his party, in their misgovernance of the City of Tshwane.

These water tanker contracts arise from his term as Mayor, alongside the accumulation of R6 billion in Eskom debt, a R1 billion liability to municipal workers, cholera deaths from contaminated water, an electricity crisis caused by failing infrastructure management, and a liquidity ratio that would have placed a normal entity into business rescue.

ActionSA salutes the work of Dr Nasiphi Moya and her multi-party coalition government for the work they are doing to turn around the City of Tshwane.

ActionSA urges this team to continue restoring the city without distraction from those who broke it and now seek to ambulance-chase the manifestations of their own failures.