By Gcina Ntsaluba
The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) visited Makhanda on Friday and vowed to dig deeper into Makana Local Municipality’s service delivery challenges, such as the crippling water crisis.
SCOPA chairman Songezo Zibi said this was a follow-up meeting to the mass march organised by local residents to demand national government intervention.
“Yeah, so today we were meeting; let me put it this way: we thought SCOPA would be able to come here during oversight week.”
“But there was just not enough time on the schedule. So, I then offered to come here to hear for myself what the issues are from some of the residents’ associations or representatives to understand what the issues are that people complain about because we only get the Auditor General’s reports,” said Zibi.
He said it would be difficult to get to the bottom of the issues without a proper account of the residents’ details.
“Without someone voicing and explaining what is happening and not happening, you may not get the proper perspective. So, I decided to come and hear for myself so that when the auditor general’s people do the actual report, I can, you know, iterate about, and it’s easy to then strategise on how to approach the oversight over this area,” he said.
When asked what he thought about the grievances voiced by residents, Zibi said he was not surprised at the nature of the complaints as he was familiar with the province.
“Yeah, no, look, I mean, I’m from the Eastern Cape, firstly. Secondly, I went to PE Tech. Thirdly, I worked at Volkswagen and have friends here.”
“So, there was nothing new overall that they told me. They just gave me more granular details on those issues. But I must say, none of it surprised me in terms of the issues themselves. They are valid, basically. Prof Saleem Badat would tell me about the water situation when he was still here. There is a journalism conference, Highway Africa. I used to come here so I am kind of familiar with the issues to that extent as a visitor.” Zibi said.
He said that in order to get more clarity on the situation, he would request more detailed reports from the auditor general going back years, not just the latest audit.
“So, to get five years’ worth of reports from the auditor general first. Secondly, the committee will process other reports, such as those of a human rights commission, a special investigating unit, etc. The reason we do that is so that we can design an intervention plan but an oversight intervention plan,” he said.
