‘Only one road has been paved’: Life in Burgersdorp, Eastern Cape

Residents of Eureka in Burgersdorp said they had been left behind on basic infrastructure, with unpaved roads, recurring power cuts, and unreliable water supply, even as the municipality reported progress on its financial recovery plan and a partial write-off of its Eskom debt.

Paul, a Eureka resident who spoke on condition that his real name not be used, said the community’s roads had gone months without maintenance.

“Only one road in the community has been paved; the rest of the roads are dirt roads that have not been graded for nearly seven months,” he told The Citizen during a recent visit to the area.

The trip is part of The Citizen‘s travels across the length and breadth of the country to explore the lives, struggles, successes, and frustrations of everyday South Africans ahead of this year’s local government elections.

Paul added that power outages became a serious problem whenever the weather turns.

“When it is windy, they have power outages that last for days, and water problems are also persistent.”

According to Paul, the water supply was inconsistent from one day to the next.

“One day they have water, then the next day the water is off.”

Housing and jobs a growing frustration

Paul said the lack of housing delivery in Eureka had pushed some residents to build informal structures on open land.

He said surrounding communities had received RDP houses while Eureka had been overlooked, and that this had led to shacks being erected without formal approval.

On employment, Paul described a community with few local opportunities.

He said men in Eureka typically found work on surrounding farms, while women relied on informal piece jobs to supplement household income, and that money earned this way was often spent on alcohol soon after it came in.

He also pointed to a literacy problem in the community, particularly among women.

“There is a big literacy problem, especially among the women,” he said.

Paul linked this partly to a lack of local schooling options, explaining that because there was no high school in the community, children had to travel to Aliwal North to attend school. He said this contributed to a high dropout rate.

Municipality says coverage is largely universal, but old infrastructure is a strain

Asked about the state of services across the municipality’s towns, Municipal Manager in the Walter Sisulu Local Municipality, Khaya Gashi, said electricity and refuse collection coverage was almost universal, with around 34 000 households receiving refuse collection, though new and informal settlement areas remained difficult to connect.

He said water and sanitation access was also close to universal.

“Areas like Better Storm have intermittent challenges with water supply due to source problems. The biggest gap is related to the source of water,” he said.

On infrastructure more broadly, Gashi said much of the electricity network was old and prone to transformer failures, and that roads, stormwater systems, and public lighting in outlying towns were also below standard, partly due to poor asset record-keeping.

“Public lighting systems are often not functioning due to various reasons, including poor record-keeping of assets. The municipality is divided between two service providers, Eskom (38% of the area) and the municipality, which complicates public lighting management.

Gashi added that the municipality had partnered with the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) to establish an infrastructure plan for electricity and another for roads and stormwater.

“The project has just been finalised, and the next step is to resource the proposed interventions,” he stated.

Burgersdorp, Walter Sisule Municipality. Image: iStock

Audit outcome improving as debt relief kicks in

On the municipality’s finances, Gashi said its audit outcome had improved from adverse to qualified between the 2021/22 and 2022/23 financial years, and that this qualified status had persisted through to 2024/25.

He stated the municipality was working toward an unqualified audit opinion, with remaining issues centred on receivables and revenue collection.

Gashi described the municipality’s financial difficulties as a legacy of the 2016 amalgamation that created it, along with mounting debt to Eskom.

The manager said the municipality had been admitted to a national debt-relief programme provided by the Minister of Finance.

“[The municipality] applied and was admitted to a programme where R537 million would be written off over three years if certain conditions prescribed in MFMA Circular 124 are met,” Gashi revealed, adding that the first R180 million had already been written off in May.

“This debt contributes to budget deficits and affects the budget funding status. Other liabilities, such as payoffs to pension funds from around 2022, have been cleared,” he added.

Recovery plan and election

According to the IEC’s 2021 Local Government Election results, the DA won the Eureka area in Ward 4. The party received nearly 60% of the vote, followed by the ANC and ATM.

IEC’s 2021 Local Government Election results

With municipal elections due in November 2026, Gashi said the section 139(5)(a) intervention that began in early 2022, and the financial recovery plan signed off by National Treasury in October 2023, would continue regardless of the election outcome.

According to him, the plan’s first phase had been completed and that it was a statutory obligation binding on any incoming council.

He said projects already under way could not simply be abandoned by a new administration, even in the event of a coalition or hung council.

Gashi rejected the perception that Burgersdorp and smaller towns received less attention than larger centres, saying the argument “wasn’t fair”.

“The economy of the municipality is concentrated in, exceeding other towns, but this does not mean there should be no equity in service delivery. Over the past five years, there has been equitable attention,” he countered.