We have a lot of money to waste in this country. Actually, we don’t, but our government appears to think we do.
If they didn’t, why would R200 million worth of metal pipes be left to rust and degrade on the side of the R524 linking Thohoyandou to Giyani, because of a bungled tender?
The pipes were bought to channel water from the Nandoni Dam outside Thohoyandou to the Nsami Dam in Giyani, where the entire town and 90 surrounding villages live with a water supply that is intermittent at best. According to Wazimap, about 1 million people are affected.
When City Press visited the area to investigate the Giyani water project nearly two years ago, residents spoke of their struggle with water outages that lasted for days. One woman said her baby daughter died of cholera because she was forced to fetch water for the household from a nearby river.
The project was started in 2009 and, eight years later, it is still unfinished.
Yet we have R200 million to waste. And another R100 million of plastic pipes is lying alongside the same road, waiting for the same thing to happen to them.
How do we stop this?
Previously, we could count on the Treasury’s governance, monitoring and compliance unit to stop tender irregularities.
But Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba is on the verge of removing the unit’s powers to identify and correct procurement problems.
All South Africans have a duty to stand up and demand that Gigaba takes the country into his confidence about his plans to restructure the Treasury. Otherwise, there will be many more pipes like these.