AfriForum wins court case against Tokologo Local Municipality over water in Dealesville

AfriForum obtained a victory on 23 February 2018 against the Tokologo Local Municipality in the Free State High Court. The civil rights organisation brought an application to hold this municipality responsible for water supply costs that AfriForum had incurred in 2016 to provide the people of Dealesville with water.

In 2015 the municipality was not able to provide the town’s residents with water because the municipal pumps were not maintained. The municipality therefore concluded an agreement with Neville Collet, a farmer in the area, in terms of which Collet would provide water to the town from a borehole on his farm. After a year, however, the municipality merely stopped paying Collet for the water without contractually terminating the agreement with Collet. The municipality owed Collet R200 000.

AfriForum hereafter constantly warned the municipality to maintain the water supply agreement with Collet as this borehole provided a steady flow of water, water usage continued to rise and because it could be expected that the municipal boreholes would most likely break down during the frequent droughts that plague the area.

AfriForum therefore continued to make payments for six months to Collet to the amount of R200 000 for pumping water from his farm to the town’s local reservoir in the town during the water crisis that hit the town in December 2015. In a letter to the Municipality, AfriForum wrote that it would no longer be financially possible for the branch to pay for the costs of pumping the water from 31 August 2016 onwards.

“The municipality never objected to the fact that water from a non-municipal source was constantly provided to the municipal system. There is therefore no way that they could not have known that AfriForum was paying for this water supply. The court’s ruling is the best outcome that we could have hoped for,” says Joseph Renaud, AfriForum’s District Coordinator for the Free State.

Residents of the Free State can join their nearest AfriForum branch by sending an SMS with their name to 45266 (R1).