Despite public assurances from the Tshwane deputy mayor and senior officials that the Rooiwal facility is operational and that maintenance would take place, there is not much taking place on this site. This is not an environmental incident but a massive economic catastrophe and a human tragedy.
Thousands of agricultural jobs have been lost as vegetable farmers shut down due to the non-functional Rooiwal Wastewater Treatment Plant in Tshwane. The water contamination has transferred pollutants into food crops, and fish and aquatic life in the Apies River have died.
Wedding venues, holiday resorts and tourism businesses have closed due to the unbearable stench and lack of clean water. Hundreds of hectares of fertile land stand empty, poisoned by pollution which has been flowing down the Apies River for more than 20 years.
Even boreholes are contaminated, forcing farmers to rely on expensive water tankers to provide drinking water for people and animals.
This discovery was made during a follow-up visit to the Rooiwal site, three months after the Gauteng Agricultural and Rural Development Portfolio Committee conducted an oversight inspection. During the first oversight inspection, the City of Tshwane promised that this site would be maintained and would become fully operational.
Instead, the Democratic Alliance (DA) Gauteng found the site to be in the same condition, with hardly any change to the waste heap that was seen three months ago. The facility is meant to produce up to four tonnes of waste material for use in a compost mixture. Only minuscule droplets of waste fall onto the concrete slabs, a clear indication that it is barely functioning.
In an outrageous display of waste and incompetence, both belt pulls are running, consuming thousands of rand of electricity while producing almost zero output. This is not inefficiency but reckless mismanagement.
A DA-led Gauteng provincial government would never allow critical infrastructure to run unattended, electricity to be wasted for zero production, or rivers to be poisoned for decades. We would immediately begin the process of fixing the treatment plant so that the Apies River is not polluted by waste and assist the agricultural community in getting back on its feet.
The people of Gauteng deserve dedicated leadership that prioritises their needs. The DA will continue to expose leadership failures, demand accountability, and fight for the restoration of Gauteng’s rivers, farms, jobs, and dignity.