20 February 2025
About 400 Mondlo residents marched to their local municipal office to hand over a memorandum of complaints over poor services. Photo: Bongane Motaung
Undeterred by the pouring rain on Wednesday, hundreds of people from Mondlo marched to the Abaqulusi Municipality offices in north KwaZulu-Natal.
They claim that since August 2023, the municipality has been “blackmailing” residents by cutting off people’s electricity to force them to pay historical debt and arrears for other municipal services.
Resident Silungile Makhoba told GroundUp: “We don’t have job opportunities and most families are headed by unemployed youth. Their electricity has been cut because some owe R40,000 and R70,000.”
In a memorandum giving the municipality seven days to respond, residents complained that there are no streetlights, that crime is rife, sewage is spilling into the Jojosini river, sanitation systems built 60 years ago have collapsed and municipal waste management is unreliable. Among their demands was to be supplied directly by Eskom.
They also want to exit the jurisdiction of the municipality. The memorandum is headlined: “Emondlo community demand back our own municipal status”.
Chairperson of Mondlo Township Civic Organisation Vusi Banda said, “In 1963 the Mondlo Township was an independent municipality, but the democratic politics swallowed our township. The municipality failed to maintain streets, toilets, water pipes and electricity cables.”
A municipal official, Thandolihle Mthembu, accepted the memo on behalf of the mayor. He told GroundUp that the municipality has been working hard to fix many things in the township.