Are ratepayers and taxpayers being taken for granted?

By Marimuthu Subramoney
(aka Subry Govender)

For two Wednesdays in a row on August 17 and 24, striking municipal workers have trashed the main Wicks Street in Verulam. On August 17, the strikers carried sticks, toppled bins, scattered rubbish all over the place and even intimidated some street vendors. While all this was happening, police officers followed the rampaging mob in a police van. They did nothing to stop these lawless people.
Then a week later on Wednesday, August 24, a group of strikers demonstrated outside the local clinic, shouting slogans, trashing the street, pointing fingers at all and sundry and showing no respect for law and order. The strikers also prevented pensioners from entering the clinic to collect their much-needed medication. Once again about 40 police officers kept watch on these strikers.
Similar protest actions were also held in Tongaat on two occasions.
Law-abiding citizens, who pay their rates and taxes regularly and without any query, are deeply disgusted, disturbed and disappointed by the actions of these strikers. They are concerned that by trashing our streets, the unruly mobs are only adding to the problems that ratepayers and residents already have to put up with. The ratepayers and residents say the strikers have contributed to the further deterioration of towns that have been degenerating for sometime.
During the struggles against apartheid hundreds of residents from the two towns contributed to a better life for all. They did not struggle for a society where there would be lawlessness and where the new police force members would just fold their arms and do nothing.
Ratepayers and residents in both Verulam and Tongaat are pretty fed up and have called on the authorities to take action to restore the confidence of the ratepayers.
We all need to work for a society where our children could attend decent schools, where we could obtain decent health care in hospitals and clinics, where we could live in peace and security without having to barricade ourselves behind high walls, barbed wire and rapid response systems.
The fat cats holding high positions - officials and councillors - in municipalities must agree to earn a lower salary so that the other workers, like the strikers, can be paid a living wage.
If the powers that be cannot look after the interests of ratepayers and taxpayers, then many residents believe it's high time they started to campaign for a rates boycott. They want to know why must they pay unreasonably high rates when the Metro cannot even guarantee them cleaner streets and a healthy environment.
"We cannot put up with this disregard for the interests of ratepayers and residents any longer", one Verulam ratepayer told Makhulu News.
Many former comrades in the two towns who played leading roles in our struggles for a "better life" for all South Africans are also not too pleased with the current state of affairs. It was former President, Nelson Mandela, in 1994, after taking office, advised ratepayers to hold municipalities accountable for cleaner and safer streets and other services. He asked ratepayers to speak out very strongly if municipalities fail to deliver. It's high time ratepayers and ratepayer organisations took his advice seriously. - Subry Govender, Chief Editor