By Sitha Maliwa:
The heart of Emfuleni Local Municipality stopped beating on Wednesday morning – not with a bang, but with the cold clank of chains and the silence of locked gates.
Residents arriving at the municipal Customer Care Centre expecting help were instead greeted by shuttered doors and a notice that confirmed their worst fears: the municipality has run out of money – not just for diesel, not just for salaries, but to even keep the lights on and the doors open.
The shutdown was abrupt, but not unexpected. For weeks, signs of a deepening crisis had been unmissable. Garbage lay rotting on pavements, fire trucks sat idle with dry tanks, and frustrated workers whispered about late salaries. Now, with the very offices of governance sealed shut, Emfuleni’s dysfunction has turned into a full-blown collapse.
Outside the locked centre, the mood was grim. Residents stood in disbelief, some pacing with unpaid bills in hand, others trying to figure out how to report sewage overflows and broken water pipes with no one answering phones or opening doors.
This wasn’t just a missed payment. It was the physical manifestation of a municipality coming undone.
What began as service disruptions has snowballed into administrative paralysis. Without access to the care centre, ratepayers are unable to make payments or lodge complaints – a disruption that risks crippling what little revenue the municipality still collects.
For a community already buckling under decaying infrastructure and unanswered service calls, the locked gates have become a powerful symbol of abandonment.
Emfuleni is not merely behind on its bills – it is unraveling in plain sight. And as local frustration boils over, calls for provincial intervention are growing louder. Community leaders are demanding that the Gauteng government stop watching from the sidelines and take control before the damage becomes irreversible.
The municipality, once a cornerstone of regional governance, is now locked behind rusted chains – with its people standing on the outside, demanding answers that may never come.
Emfuleni’s decay is not isolated; it is the latest in a string of ANC-run municipalities across the country buckling under the weight of corruption and incompetence. Despite multiple warnings, investigations, and oversight visits, little has changed.
The ANC’s iron grip on the region has meant accountability remains elusive. Even when damning audits are tabled, consequences rarely follow.
Civic groups and opposition parties are now demanding that the provincial government dissolve the municipal council and place Emfuleni under full administration.
But for the residents standing outside locked gates on Wednesday, such promises sound all too familiar. They’ve heard them before – while their taps ran dry, their bins overflowed, and their town faded into administrative darkness.
Now, they’re left asking: When the people are locked out, who exactly is the municipality serving? – @NewsSA_Online
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