Residents of Ward 80 in Pretoria Central took their anger and frustration to the street by marching to Tshwane House to deliver a memorandum of grievances on Monday 5 February.
They were joined by chairperson of Tshwane Civic movement Khomotso Sepelle.
The residents are marching against the ward councilor Fortune Mampuru accusing him of not calling a community meeting since he became ward councilor.
The community is calling for a vote of no confidence against the ward 80 councilor.
Residents said there is no service delivery in the ward, and they want community to sign petition and demand the removal of the councilor.
Residents gave the City of Tshwane seven days to respond to their demands regarding service delivery and ward councilor.
“We are frustrated as residents of this ward.
Since our councilor Mampuru took over there has never been a community meeting.
There is no public participation meetings.
By-laws are not followed.
We just see things happening without community involvement,” said leader of the residents Veina Molokomme.
She said councilor Mampuru is serving his second term but there is no improvement in his performance.
This march should have been attended by large numbers of people, but people were threatened that they would be arrested.
Many people are scared to talk.
“We don’t know what our future will be as good as the Councilor doesn’t inform us about developments in the community,” lamented Molokomme.
The City of Tshwane and the mayor know that they have failed us.
They must come to our community and rectify the wrong things that they have done,” she said.
Malokome said we welcome help from anyone who can help us to expose the wrong things that are happening in our community.
We believe that after this march the City of Tshwane will realise that we are serious about our demands.
As a community we will work together and come up with a way forward regarding what to do.
One of the marchers told the crowd that the councilor that they have elected has abandoned them as a community and also failing them.
We are tired of thieves.
Since 2021 no community meeting has ever been called.
We must sign a petition for the removal of the mayor. Enough at s enough,” he said.
city of Tshwane MMC of Corporate and shared services Kingsley Wakelin addressing the crowd said he promised to take the memorandum to the speaker’s office and will respond in 7 days.
We have 107 wards, and it can be very difficult to explain what happen to specific wards, but we have taken very seriously notes and we can see that the community is upset, and we will do right by their memorandum.
“We will submit the memorandum to the speaker office and Mayor Office and to respond in 7 days and possible to investigate the matter around the ward councilor in particular,” MMC Wakelin said.
He said we will investigate and respond to the community.
The speaker got the right to deal with this matter and we will also request MEC to intervene on this matter and submit to the
particular party that is involved.
Ward 40 councilor Fortune Mampuru said he does call community meetings every quarterly and informs the community about the development in the ward.
“The people who were marching are not even living in the ward and are staying in other wards.
They come to his wards because of the jobs and business opportunity,” Mampuru said.
He said the people who organize the march organize caleed the illegal immigrant to help them march because community did not want to join them.
As councilor we don’t have the budget to fix the road, lights and potholes, electricity and the budget comes from the city.