So come and participate!
Please send all letters to
[email protected]
Kim Kemp | Editor | [email protected]
technology
I will select the best letter,
whose writer will win a
space on our fortnightly
bulletin, offering exposure
of their company to the
readership, with a logo
and link to their website.
The new Minister of Water and Sanitation, Gugile Nkwinti.
We are looking for
participation from our
varied readership and
from those ‘on-the-
ground’ within the water
sector. We want to hear
your opinions on current
affairs, on improvements
to the publication, and
even offer you a space
to vent.
to engage with the National Treasury on the
overdraft.”
So, what does Gugile Nkwinti bring to the
table that will right the water department?
According to his pedigree, he has a master’s
degree in Public Policy and Management from
the University of London and a Bachelor of
Administration degree specialising in Political
Science, Public Administration and Applied
Economics from the University of South Africa.
Prior to his appointment as Minister of
Land Reform, he was Speaker of the Eastern
Cape Provincial Legislature from 1994 to 1999,
MEC for Housing from 1999 to 2005; and MEC
for Agriculture Eastern Cape from 2005 to
2009.
Seems he’s been around the block a couple
of times and should by now know what is
expected of him in his ministerial role, right?
We can only hope it’s more a case of ‘one
man’s poison is another man’s medicine’ …
or some such mixed metaphor. Either way,
something urgent has to be done about the
DWS as lives are depending on it. u
To the editor
hen Cyril Ramaphosa was elected
South Africa’s new president,
word was that he had inherited a
‘poisoned chalice’, what with gangsters and
others in his ‘top six’.
But at least he can reshuffle if so needs
be, whereas the new Minister of Water and
Sanitation, Gugile Nkwinti, has seriously been
handed a poisoned ministry from outgoing
minister Nomvula Mokonyane — and he has
nowhere to go. It also doesn’t help that he too
has come in under a cloud of controversy.
Last year, he was embroiled in a dubious
land deal when he was Minister of Rural
Development and Land Reform, where he
allegedly helped friends take over a R97-million
farm. He reportedly introduced a Luthuli House
comrade, ‘shopping’ for a thriving Limpopo
farm, to one of his top officials at a land summit.
Just eight months after the meeting‚
Bekendvlei Farm was bought for R97-million
and handed over to Errol Velile Present‚ who
had been working at Luthuli House for more
than 10 years‚ and his partner, businessman
Moses Boshomane, to manage, while Nkwinti
allegedly pocketed a cool R2-million for his
services.
But then, Nomvula Mokonyane is not, and
has never been, a paragon of virtue by any
means. With her ‘broken water department’,
which is officially bankrupt, she gets to flounce
off to the ministry of communications, while
the Standing Committee on Public Accounts
(Scopa) lambastes her for ‘collapsing’ the water
department, decries the reshuffling, and calls
for charges to be laid. And rightly so.
Themba Godi, Scopa chairperson, has
called for a full parliamentary inquiry and
for criminal charges to be opened against
Mokonyane’s former ministry, pointing out
that the Department of Water and Sanitation
(DWS) suffered a complete collapse under
Mokonyane’s stewardship.
Godi said in a statement: “This department
has a long history of instability and financial
mismanagement, and Scopa has resolved to
open a criminal case against the department
because of the R2.9-billion overdraft that the
department took with the [South African]
Reserve Bank. The committee has also resolved
A genuinely poisoned chalice
W
“This department has a long
history of instability and
financial mismanagement.”
Themba Godi, Scopa chairperson
Water Sewage & Effluent March/April 2018
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