RESIDENTS of Nkomazi near the Swaziland border have vowed to make the local municipality ungovernable if the entire council is not dissolved.

This follows a string of corruption allegations against most of the councillors.

Thousands have been engaged in protest marches, some of which turned violent and ended in the arrest of a number of people last week.

The latest march took place on Thursday and was relatively peaceful.

The protesters had come in their thousands but a group of people wearing yellow ANC T-shirts allegedly tried to disrupt the protest in an apparent attempt to save the councillors embarrassment.

Mayor Johan Mavuso received a memorandum, with one of the demands being that he should freeze the functioning of the municipality until the ANC's national executive committee had probed the corruption allegations.

Community spokesperson Zikhali Dlamini said: "We are aware that some councillors own fronting companies that receive payments from the municipality and that the fencing of graves that initially cost R30000 dramatically ended up costing more than R190000. That is corruption at its worst and people are tired."

Meanwhile the ANC in the province has distanced itself from the people who tried to disrupt the protest march.

"Somebody called me to say there were people wearing yellow T-shirts and claiming the ANC had sent them to stop the march," ANC Mpumalanga provincial secretary Lucky Ndinisa said yesterday.

"We distance the ANC from this because people have the right to express their concerns in various ways, including protest marches, as long as there is no intimidation or damage to property."