Zeerust residents bemoan poor service delivery as they shut down town

The community of Zeerust in the North West on Tuesday undertook to shut down the town, preventing anyone from entering or leaving the area. 

This after months of no water supply.

Community leader Pilot Mosothwane said: “All we want is service delivery.”

All entry and exit points in the town were blocked by taxis early on Tuesday, with the N4 between Zeerust and Botswana also affected. 

“We know this is the only language our ANC government understands. We tried several times to engage with them through meetings and sending e-mails but that has not given us any results. Nothing has changed,” Mosothwane said.

He said some areas have been without water for three months while others have been without for eight months.

“Our roads are in a bad condition, we don’t have water and there are no community upliftment projects,” Mosothwane said. 

Grade 12 pupil Nnuna Ledikwa told TimesLIVE she had not been able to go to school on Tuesday to attend a mathematics revision programme.

“That revision programme was very important for me because I was going to be able to interact with my teacher. It would have allowed me an opportunity to ask questions.”

Ledikwa said she has been revising on her own at home, but admitted it is not the same as having a teacher in front of her to assist. 

“When I encounter challenges I can’t ask anyone. It’s an unfortunate situation and I feel inconvenienced by this. Although I’m also affected by the water outage, I wish they could have chosen a better time to do this. Maybe they should have done this early this year, or postponed it to later,” she said.

Mosothwane said they were aware it is final exams time, but their plan was to be finished by 10am, when exams were expected to be written. 

“The grade 12 pupils are camping at schools and question papers were to be escorted by police to the schools that are supposed to write economics today,” he said. 

Spokesperson for the provincial department of education Elias Malindi did not respond to questions on whether examinations were affected in the area and whether the department had a plan to counter the situation should pupils be affected.  

MEC for community safety and transport Sello Lehari went to the community to accept their memorandum of demands. 

Mosothwane said Lehari made a commitment that premier Bushy Maape would meet with community leaders on Wednesday.  “He called the premier in front of us and the premier agreed to avail himself and meet with us. Hopefully we will have a way forward after the meeting,” he said. 

Community safety department spokesperson Oshebeng Koonyaditse confirmed roads had reopened later in the morning. 

TimesLIVE