Litter is piled high on every street corner. When the wind drops, a faint stench permeates the air. Raw sewage flows from broken pipes. Clean drinking water flows down the streets. Cars swerve to avoid potholes.
This is Mangaung, home to SA’s judicial capital of Bloemfontein, which is historically known as the City of Roses.
Under administration since 2019 because of mismanagement, the metro was this week engulfed in three days of violent protests. Clinics that were to deliver vaccines to the over-60s were shut. Only 240 people were vaccinated, all of them on Monday.
The Free State is battling a third wave of Covid-19. By Friday the province had 96,222 reported cases, 4,110 deaths and 6,523 active cases. Health officials are scrambling to contain rising infection numbers.
Questions to the city, its administrator and the Free State health department on service delivery and vaccination plans went unanswered.
“This is not the City of Roses. This is the City of Shit,” exclaimed 62-year-old Mangaung resident Daisie Adams.
She and other elderly women spent Thursday morning sweeping the streets outside their homes in Heidedal, a suburb to the southeast of the city centre. It’s the third time this week they have cleaned the streets.
“If we don’t, the rats will eat the children in their sleep,” said Adams.
Directly opposite these homes is a local council office. Overgrown with grass, equipment needed to repair roads and fix water pipes stands rusting.
Staff at a nearby clinic cannot help patients because water and electricity accounts have not been paid.
“They are there but they just spend the day talking to each other,” said Adams.
Seven kilometres away, the city centre is awash with rubbish. Litter from the metro’s two overflowing landfill sites blows across the N1.
Tensions in the city are high.
Years of mismanagement, along with the irregular spending of R1.6bn of municipal money, have led to the auditor-general making repeated adverse findings against city officials.
Led by the Mangaung Concerned Community [MCC], people shut down the metro with violent protests.
Schoolboy Liam Siegel, 14, was shot dead in the mayhem on Monday, allegedly by a security guard.
Adams, who has epilepsy, is worried.
“My children battled to register me on government’s [Covid-19] system. I could not go because of the protest. I do not know when I must go again.
“Three of our community leaders, including a principal, a councillor and our pastor, died last week from Covid-19. I am scared I will die next.”
In nearby Khayelitsha, resident Dinah Rantsane, 83, said this week that she was unable to go to the clinic for her Covid-19 vaccination or to collect her chronic medication.
“I still have not received an SMS to say when I must go again. I am scared I will miss the vaccine.”
She said she and her family had become used to the sewage flowing past their front door.
“I don’t blame the protesters for what they did. I blame the council. If they delivered services, picked up the rubbish and fixed the roads, I could have got my vaccination. I could be safe from the corona.”
Maria Lepheane, who is studying to be a teacher, said she could not attend classes when it rained.
As she spoke, a bakkie carrying a girl in school uniform got stuck in mud from the sewerage water.
“I didn’t like it that people who were going to work were attacked, but I understand why the strike happened. People are angry,” said Lepheane.
Dollie du Plessis supports the protest. She lives in Olive Hill, a suburb to the north of the city centre.
“Here we do things for ourselves,” she said. “Our suburb’s residents pay someone R150 a month to collect our rubbish. We trim trees on the council’s pavements so they don’t break the power lines, and fix potholes so people don’t die in accidents.”
MCC spokesperson Lilly Tsoeu said the municipality had been placed under administration “because it can’t function”.
“Tasks were given to the administrator to recoup monies, develop the economy to create jobs and improve the city’s management. This has not happened. Unemployment is sky high.
“Violence erupted when the police opened fire with rubber bullets. That’s when things got out of hand. Foreigners’ shops were looted and the teenager was killed.”
South African Local Government Association (Salga) spokesperson Thabang Sikisi said Mangaung was placed under administration in December 2019 because the municipality operated at a deficit. Conditional grants were used for operations and the city could not provide some basic services.
He said Salga had helped with the municipality’s financial recovery plan.
Sello Pietersen, a spokesperson for Free State premier Sisi Ntombela, said: “While more must be done, there is progress. Following interventions there is stability at the municipality and significant improvement in the municipality’s financial affairs, which has seen an improvement in the provision of services.”
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