EFF promises 20 young plumbers per ward in eThekwini leak plan
Mayoral candidate Hlengiwe Mkhaliphi says the party would hire and train young people to fix thousands of leaks, review billing errors and overhaul the indigency policy if it takes the metro.
The EFF would put 20 young people to work fixing water leaks in every eThekwini ward if it wins control of the metro, its mayoral candidate for the city, Hlengiwe Mkhaliphi, has said.
As IOL reported on 21 September, Mkhaliphi told The Daily News the party would hire and train young residents as plumbers, working with a TVET college, and would skip main contractors to avoid the work being subcontracted out from under them.
The plan is the centrepiece of the party’s pitch to a metro where burst pipes and dry taps have become a routine part of life for thousands of households.
Mkhaliphi said the EFF had identified water shortages, incorrect billing, historic debt and gaps in the municipality’s indigency policy as its top priorities. She said thousands of leaks across the city meant water bought from Umgeni-Uthukela Water was being lost before it reached communities, naming uMlazi and Phoenix among the affected areas.
She also said the billing system had been unfair to residents, including people who had paid on time and were later hit with steep charges after the municipality discovered it had billed them incorrectly. She said the party wants historic debt that flowed from those errors to be cancelled, arguing that consumers should not be held liable for the municipality’s mistakes.
On the indigency policy, which determines who qualifies for rates and service relief, Mkhaliphi said the EFF would conduct a thorough audit. She said the current policy assumes that living in a particular area means you can afford to pay, and does not account for residents whose circumstances have changed, such as a former school principal who bought a house in Westville and has since exhausted a pension payout.
Mkhaliphi is a senior EFF member deployed to Parliament and sits on the Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. She said the party intended to retain its seat and grow its support, and acknowledged that the rise of the uMkhonto weSizwe Party had caught the EFF by surprise. She said she was confident voters would back the EFF as a large and stable party.
Political analyst Professor Musa Xulu said the EFF could be impactful again in these elections. He said the party’s support in KwaZulu-Natal had declined in the 2024 national and provincial elections, but that with excitement around the MK Party slowing, the EFF was likely to become influential again, particularly among young voters.
Xulu said Mkhaliphi is a robust politician born and raised in Durban, well educated, a PhD candidate, and an MP since 2014, and that she is likely to attract votes in the Inanda, Ntuzuma and KwaMashu cluster. He said he expects the EFF to play more of a kingmaker role than to lead the eThekwini metropolitan municipality, arguing that the MK Party, ANC and DA are unlikely to work together, which leaves the IFP and the EFF as the layer without which no sustainable coalition can be formed.
The promises land in a city that has been under pressure for years over water losses, ageing infrastructure and billing disputes, and in a metro where coalition arithmetic after the vote may matter as much as any single party’s manifesto.
Source: IOL, EFF promises ‘war on leaks’ and 20 young workers per eThekwini ward
