As promised during our first visit earlier this month with the Mamelodi families whose children tragically drowned at an unattended quarry, we returned for the second visit with our Lily Mine legal team from Mkhabela Huntley Attorneys Inc. led by senior council Wendel Bloem to finalise plans to pursue legal action against those responsible for this gross negligence.
Our legal team, together with the families began the visit at the site of the crime scene where Siyabonga Mabela aged 7, and Lawrence Tshweu 4 years met their tragic and untimely deaths.
We then proceeded to the Mabela family home for a formal briefing with the attorneys so that legal action papers can be drawn up and urgently served to the City of Tshwane and Gauteng Department of Transport as official accounting authorities responsible for this tragedy.
Last year, a similar tragedy occurred in Hammanskraal where three young boys, Samuel Maphoso, 10, Kutlwano Mkhwanazi, 9, and Tshepo Machete, 10, also drowned in an unattended storm water trench.
ActionSA is pleased to announce that the same legal team is ready with the papers to institute legal action against the City of Tshwane within a month or so.
What is most troubling is that the people we have entrusted with the provision of public goods so that our communities can be safer places for our children to grow up seem to care less about the irreversible implications of their actions where the lives of children are put in danger.
It is heart-breaking that the provision of the most basic needs for our people are continually put on the back burner. I mean the community of Skierlik have little to no proper access to water and sanitation facilities 27 years into our democracy. And sadly, they are not the only ones.
During our work and as we communities throughout South Africa responding to calls for help in places like Hammanskraal and Princess, or Ivory Park informal settlements, the issues are the same.
In almost every community across the country like Skierlik, there is no running water, open sewerage water spills everywhere, broken road infrastructure or none at all, illegal electricity connections, inadequate ablution facilities…the list goes on.
It is immensely disappointing that as we were celebrating Human Rights Day this past long weekend, one cannot help but be reminded of the deep betrayal the people of our country have suffered at the hands of the ANC government. Here we find ourselves enduring even worser living conditions than we did prior to 1994.
This has got to change.