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James de Villiers, News24 The fight over the Kgetlengrivier Municipality waterworks heads to court again. The community appointed a new service provider after government failed to pay Mogale Water on time. The provincial government wants the case to go to the Constitutional Court. The bitter battle between a North West community and the municipality over water infrastructure will again play out in court, with accusations that the Kgetlengrivier Concerned Residents (KCR) group is trying to undermine the government. The North West Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) has accused the community formation that took over the running of the Kgetlengrivier Local municipality waterworks of undermining the government. ....
In an interim order, Judge Festus Gura sentenced the Kgetlengrivier s municipal manager to 90 days imprisonment, suspended, and agreed to allow the residents’ association, Kgetlengrivier Concerned Citizens, to take control of the waterworks, paid for by local and provincial government. The judge also gave the municipality until 1 March 2021 to demonstrate why the interim order should not be made final. In the op-ed, Potter draws on SERI s recently published case study on how the Harrismith Water Heroes in Maluti-a-Phofung are claiming their community s water rights by fixing their town’s water infrastructure, largely at their own cost. Potter argues that as innovative as self-provision undoubtedly is, water is a public good and it is profoundly risky for water services providers to operate without public oversight. She writes that while the agreement reached in the Kgetlengrivier case might present a short-term solution to rehabilitate and run water services in small r ....
On 18 December 2020, the North West High Court declared that the Kgetlengrivier Local Municipality was in breach of its constitutional obligations and that it had failed to supply potable water to the residents of Koster and Swartruggens. Further, the court found that its wastewater treatment works were mismanaged and in a state of disrepair. In his interim order, Judge Festus Gura sentenced the municipal manager to 90 days imprisonment, suspended, and agreed to allow the residents’ association, Kgetlengrivier Concerned Citizens, to take control of the waterworks, paid for by local and provincial government. He gave the municipality until 1 March 2021 to demonstrate why this interim order should not be made final. ....