MEDIA STATEMENT
BY THE
INKATHA FREEDOM PARTY
SAHRC Must Investigate Mpumalanga Local Government
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IFP PRESS
STATEMENT RELEASED BY: 14th August 2008 The IFP is outraged by a decision of the Mpumalanga local government to spend R22-million on the production of a musical play honouring one of the ANC's struggle heroes, Gert Sibande, while thousands of residents in the province don't have access to water, said Mr Mabalana Sibuyana, the IFP's Spokesperson on Water Affairs, today. Mr Sibuyana commented: "This is absolutely outrageous and amounts to misuse of public funds. How can they justify spending such a large amount of money on a play when many people in Mpumalanga are, on a daily basis, denied their basic right to water? "The local government of Mpumalanga have failed the citizens of Bushbuckridge by not supplying water to the estimated 100 000 people who live there. Now they are wasting R22-million on a musical play and another R2,7 million on a statue of Gert Sibande. It's unacceptable. "What happened to the promise of a better life for all?" Mr Sibuyana continued: "I am a resident of this community and in one month we had to bury Pauline Mbizozo Ndubane, 75, Flora Malatjie, 61, and Saliah Sibuyi, 70, who fell to their deaths in a well in Nkomo village, near Acornhoek, looking for water. "The South African Constitution affords us all the basic right to housing, food and water, health care, social security, education and a healthy environment. The state is required to respect, protect, promote and fulfil all the rights recognised in the Bill of Rights, including the economic and social rights." Mr Sibuyana added that the cries of the community of Bushbuckridge have been ignored for far too long, and that an urgent probe is now needed. "It was reported in the media in July 2008 that the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) is probing alleged human rights abuse by Mpumalanga's department of health and social services, due a critical shortage of doctors in the province. "Therefore, the IFP now calls on the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) to urgently launch an investigation into the continued human rights abuses by the Province of Mpumalanga. We believe they are guilty because they are denying the community of Bushbuckridge their basic right to water," concluded Mr Sibuyana.
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