Let us put Samora Machel in our prayers. That area is a disaster, and it is becoming worse daily.
Samora gets services like any other community, but I see no change. In this instance I’m not talking about crime, but about how it looks. I do not know what happened to its infrastructure, but it is a mess.
Out of all the areas I am working in, Samora Machel is the worst. Its roads are a nightmare. I doubt if there is any proper street there where there is no pothole or spilling sewage.
My question is, who must be blamed for the mess between the City and the community? As a community we need to take responsibility for our actions. We can’t rely on the government for everything. The reality is, there is no difference between informal settlements and formal houses. All are the same. Even some informal settlements are much better than Samora.
The community members have the guts to illegally dump the rubbish next to the police station.
There are some sections in the area that I don’t go to because of the state of the roads and people dumping the rubbish in the middle of the road. You can visit the corner of Coline Williams and Bathandwa Mdingi streets or go to Michael Mapongwana street you’ll see what I’m talking about. Those are the worst streets.
I feel sorry for the Ward 33 councillor Lungisa Somdaka, he is working tirelessly but he is fighting a losing battle, his community doesn’t support him. It will take years for that area to change. No leader will change Samora if the community does not want to change their mentality.
I don’t buy the notion that the underground infrastructure is collapsing because it is old or there is more population in the area and the system doesn’t cope with the capacity. That is a lie.
We all know the major problem we are facing in our communities is people discarding foreign objects in the drains. We have seen people when they are renovating their houses dump the rubble into the drains. What are we expecting from that? Only when we change our mindset and start to think positively can we can change our communities. But with the mentality that we have now, we are going nowhere.