Ditsobotla Services Association, North West province

Using the muscle of business and the might of litigation, a not-for-profit community association called Ditsobotla Services Association (DSA) has been fighting to restore essential services in the troubled Ditsobotla municipality in the North West province. The DSA has had success in restoring key services to their homes and businesses. They continue to use the courts as a legal avenue to protect basic rights to water and electricity for ratepayers and residents. They’ve also been able to generate media coverage and awareness about the challenges their community faces, and in so doing, continue to force local government and officials to be held to account and to find lasting solutions for their district. 

What was the problem?

Ditsobotla is a key agricultural area with towns like Lichtenburg and Coligny well known as maize, sunflower and groundnuts farming country. It also boasts established mining and manufacturing sectors. It has a population of about 200 000 people. 

For well over a decade there has been deteriorating service delivery. The area suffered from corruption, looting, political and administrative instability, incompetent governance and management as well as absent leadership. The North West province municipality has slid into a state of dysfunction. The council was dissolved in 2022 and reconstituted but has also been under “mandatory intervention”, which invokes Section 139(5) of the Constitution.  This means provincial legislature steps in because of the ongoing failures in the municipality.

The council has racked up massive debt and there is little or no service delivery. There has been lots of protest action, high anxiety and hopelessness. Residents say they can go six or eight weeks at a time without piped water. There are widespread and long electricity outages, a lack of sanitation services and there’s little or no road maintenance. 

Ditsobotla’s budget deficit is estimated to be around R171 million in the current financial year. The municipality owes Eskom more than R1.2 billion, R200 million to other creditors and household debt (made up of everything that all individuals in a household owe to lenders. This includes credit card debt, student loan repayments, etc)  is R1.4 billion, according to BusinessTech. 

How did they fix it?

In 2023 a community of residents, local businesses and the farming community set up the Ditsobotla Services Association. The not-for-profit organisation pools resources among the members - from donations in goods, equipment and money to know-how and skills, labour and time. 

They raised funds among members to install back-up power systems, to buy pumps and motors to keep services working and drilled boreholes. As much as possible they have made this water and electricity available to the broader community.  

A critical component of building their strength has been through collaborating with Sakeliga. This business league has as its mission to create and protect a stable environment and infrastructure for business in South Africa to flourish. It is also funded by members and uses litigation and dispute resolution to “establish legal precedents and good practice on dealing with municipal failure and to assist with alternative mechanisms for service delivery”, it says on its website.

A key legal challenge in Ditsobotla has been to take Eskom to court to compel the power utility to restore electricity to the district and sort out its dispute of the municipality’s unpaid accounts. This has been done using the Intergovernmental Relations Act, as they say “it is illegal for Eskom to use a town’s businesses and residents as a bargaining chip to extract payment from a municipality … They are not allowed to penalise third parties.” In other words, the residents and businesses can’t be out of services because of the municipality not paying its bills.

They have also challenged the municipality for routinely cutting off electricity to DSA members, claiming they haven’t paid their bills. Sakeliga has argued that ratepayers who have used proper statutory processes - so-called Section 102 disputes - are protected from having their services cut by the municipality while a dispute is unresolved. 

DSA has continued to offer help to the municipality, most recently by offering free support to assess water problems in the district and to test boreholes to ensure they pump water efficiently. They have not been given permission by the municipality to undertake this work. 

Together with Sakeliga, DSA is building a case for the municipality to be placed under Section 139(5) provincial administration and possibly also for national administration Section 139(7). 

What made it work?

• The community got organised – started an association that recognised the advantage of combining resources from funds, skills, time and labour.

• Finding support, sponsorship and common goals with other organisations, in their case – Sakeliga.

• Using legally established ways to resolve disputes; using litigation to defend rights under the rule of law. 

• Alerting the media – using the power of publicity to spotlight the challenges of a broken municipality.

• Working with the municipality - they were open to assisting the municipality and attending meetings aimed at finding ways to resolve billing disputes and to restore and sustain service delivery, thereby ending protest action.

• Being on the side of the broader community; not just DSA members.

Acknowledgements

Author: FixLocal Reporter

Additional articles/ sources:

Sakeliga welcomes and supports two promising initiatives in Ditsobotla 

Forgotten South African town collapsed for all to see 

Photograph: BusinessTech