In a bid to further examine and address South Africa’s ailing sewage infrastructure, ActionSA will on Monday launch its plans to turn this around through ‘The Shitty Tour’.
ActionSA’s Michael Beaumont said the party would be kicking off the tour as the sad truth that a number of communities have to deal sewage in the streets and even homes on a daily basis in the country.
He said the end result being the contamination of groundwater, pollution of rivers, coastlines, outbreaks of cholera and the utter collapse of local tourism, as evidenced by the drop of tourists flocking to eThekwini, which saw 7.4 million tourists in 2015 but only 800 000 in 2023.
“‘The Shitty Tour’ as it has been dubbed, aims to stop the sugar-coating of the truth that too many South Africans are having to live amongst their own waste because of government failure.
“The Constitution guarantees every South African the rights to dignity, health, clean water, a clean environment and economic development. The failures of municipalities to manage sewage infrastructure is patently infringing on these rights for more South Africans on a daily basis,” he said.
The concerns surrounding the state of sewage infrastructure and impact on communities across the country, come after the dismal findings of the Department of Water and Sanitation’s Blue Drop 2023 National Report, which revealed how numerous municipalities across the country were battling with addressing sewage challenges, leading up to the department even instituting criminal cases against some municipalities.
The department opened 36 criminal cases against 26 municipalities for sewage spills that contravenes environmental legislation.
However, Beaumont said ActionSA had already from 2022 taken the eThekwini metro to court over the failure of its sewage infrastructure which had reportedly polluted communities, rivers and a coastline, popular with domestic and international tourists.
Through ‘The Shitty Tour’, Beaumont explained how the party would kick off its activities by examining cases of sewage infrastructure collapse in Cape Town, East London, Makhanda and Welkom.
At the heart of their plans to address this, he said, would be to oversee municipalities who had the greatest cause of this growing problem, and ensure municipal budgets contain mandatory minimum infrastructure renewal, repairs and maintenance, with provinces to oversee the return on investment derived from this spend.
“ActionSA will conduct this tour to present practical solutions to solving South Africa’s sewage infrastructure problems and we will do so in an environment where no other party has placed this important issue in the forefront of their agenda.”
The Star