Cradock and Middelburg — water shutdowns over unpaid bills mark ‘10-year anniversary of a huge balls-up’

“What we should have done is have a big braai to mark 10 years of a huge balls-up,” says Cradock ward councillor Rika Featherstonehaugh. 

Featherstonehaugh’s office was inundated with calls from angry residents and business owners whose water was cut by the Chris Hani District Municipality in a blitz that saw key tourism and visitor assets in the town cut off. This comes as about 2,000 taxis a day are expected to pass through the town and with all accommodation facilities fully booked for the holidays.

The Chris Hani District Municipality managed to get R3.5-million in payment for water bills after disconnecting the water to 35 businesses, government departments and offices of the local municipality in Cradock and Middelburg, starting on Monday, 2 December.

The municipality was recently downgraded by the international credit agency Moody’s mostly because of its appalling collection rate, which is 5.89% for Cradock and Middelburg and even lower, below 1%, for other towns in the district. 

Chris Hani District Municipality spokesperson Buli Ganyaza said the disconnection programme for water services was launched in Cradock and Middelburg  “following numerous engagements with non-paying businesses and government account holders within the district”. 

She said on Friday that the municipality had disconnected 35 businesses. These businesses will now use smart meters for future billing, but the outstanding billing is in chaos, many business owners said.

Wilhelm Smit, who heads the Cradock Business Chamber, said not all business owners received notices of the disconnections, although the municipality insisted notices were sent out. 

“Some never received notices. They are being aggressive. We have asked for a while for them [the municipality] to sit with us and work with them. We said from the start we want to pay for our water and we are in favour of the smart meters. It is excellent that they are installing these. But they have not handled this well. People are very angry and unhappy about this. The [timing] is terrible. It should have been done a while ago. They took the water [services] over 10 years ago,” he said.”

Business owners were required to drive 140km to Komani to pay for water before the service was reconnected. 

But some business owners were happy to receive a smart meter. Local business owner Frikkie Coetzee said it will solve all his current billing problems. “I had the first one installed. They were going to do a second one but they couldn’t find the pipes.”

Executive mayor Lusanda Sizani said the disconnection blitz in the district started on 29 November. “Our consumers owe us R541-million in Inxuba Yethemba municipality [Cradock and Middelburg]. We want to ask that people pay us. We can’t do service delivery if they don’t pay. We will embark on this programme until June 2025.”

Consumers across the district municipality owe a total of R1.6-billion. Chris Hani District Municipality is the water services authority for six municipalities in the district and was controversially appointed to manage water services in 2014. 

The district municipality’s tenure, now 10 years old, has never been accepted by residents, who went as far as approaching Parliament in 2015 to ask the government to reverse the appointment of the district municipality as the water services agent.

Read more : Ground Level Report: Chris Hani Municipality’s rivers of sewage flow freely after years of incompetence and neglect

At the time, Parliament heard that neither the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs nor the Department of Water and Sanitation was involved in the decision to delegate the water services function to the district municipality.

Since then the residents and businesses have been plagued by problematic account billing, including accounts for properties in the names of previous owners, many of whom were deceased. Apart from the billing issues, the area is also frequently subject to water outages and shocking sewage spills linked to failures by the municipality.

Featherstonehaugh, the Democratic Alliance councillor for Ward 5, where many of the disconnections were carried out, said the town should have held a big braai to mark 10 years of billing chaos since Chris Hani District Municipality took over the provision of water services. She said many businesses where water use used to be low were hit by large accounts, some accounts were in the names of deceased former owners and some were older than three years. She said frequent water outages were causing air pockets in the plumbing, which is pushing up water meter readings.

The disconnection blitz started in Cradock and Middelburg on Monday and continued through the week.

Livid consumers and onerous application processes

Officials from the Chris Hani District Municipality discuss disconnecting water services for defaulting ratepayers. (Photo: Supplied)

A team from the Chris Hani District Municipality engaging with the public on the new smart meters that are being introduced in Cradock. (Photo: Supplied)

Chaotic, enormous billing