By Nasiha Khan
Tensions between Ward 34 residents and their Councillor Bobby Ashok Maharajh, from the Democratic Alliance, recently reached boiling point resulting in a public confrontation and community members “taking” him to Havelock Road which had been without electricity for a total of four days.
A video of the incident surfaced on social media last week, showing the frustrated residents confronting the councillor at a local eatery during what appeared to be a meeting. One of the residents in the video, Gerald Francis, told Durban North News that the councillor was missing in action while the residents of Havelock Road were in the dark for four days.
“People on the Old North Coast Road were without water for three to four days as well. I am not a politician, I am an activist and residents were in need of my help. I found out that Bobby was having a ward committee meeting, the first in one year, after calling out some favours to get the relevant department to take a look at the issue. We hijacked the meeting and took him to Havelock Road where we demanded that he stay with the residents until the relevant department arrived. That evening power was restored to residents,” said Francis.
He added that this was not the first time that he had to call in favours to ensure service delivery issues were dealt within the ward and believes that the community has taken it upon themselves to run Ward 34, as they are unable to rely on their councillor. Another resident, Mark Rampono, said Cllr Maharajh has failed the community by not serving in the capacity that he is supposed to.
“I can say this without a shadow of a doubt because I have been there since he came into his position. When he first came in, he got lucky, in that his predecessor did all the legwork to get those pavements installed in Effingham Road and the Greenwood Park area. I have worked with him when people went against him and I said that we aren’t the enemy here, we want to help you and work with you but Bobby takes things personally. I don’t want to bad mouth anybody but I think its important to place on record that Bobby is completely missing in action. When something happens its usually the community who pushes and fight for services. The man gets paid to provide residents with a service and yet he cannot even return a call. Residents have resorted to contacting and pleading to other councillors for help. The community is running this ward,” said Rampono .
Commenting on the allegations of him being missing in action, Cllr Maharajh said communication was an issue that he is currently working on and urges residents to consider the dimensions of Ward 34 which consists of nine areas, including two industrial/business areas and 15 informal settlements.
He said: “There is much more focus from the city in areas such as La Lucia and uMhlanga because of tourism. We are not getting the service we are supposed to. With regards to communication, which I am trying to get right, when I am sitting in my car trying to follow a water tanker, I don’t have time to take a call. My duties are time consuming. When I am in a meeting I think its disrespectful to accept a call. In an hour I get around 500 WhatsApp messages. That in itself it’s a long exercise. I have put together WhatsApp groups with plus minus 3000 individuals that WhatsApp me. Many people don’t understand that there is a cut off time during the day. In many instances I am burning the midnight oil while working on resolving issues.”
Cllr Maharajh, who said he had almost doubled his votes in the last election, added that he has been called a liar and was sworn at numerous times as well as accused of fraud, stating that residents have been constantly defaming him with no solid proof of the accusations.
“I can handle all of those things quite well until there were attacks on my wife. Anyone would get upset. A councillor is not God, we are human. The circumstances are different for each ward. Ironically sometimes residents from other surrounding wards contact me and I happily assist. The circumstances are different for each ward and all north Durban councillors work as a team. I want residents to understand that we depend on the municipality for service. The councillor does not own or command the various departments. The councillor is just the in between. I am a resident myself and I go through the same things,” said Cllr Maharajh.
DA eThekwini caucus leader, Councillor Thabani Mthethwa said he can confirm that as leadership of the DA eThekwini he is aware of the current infrastructure failures, not only in Ward 34 but in the whole of eThekwini.
“It is very unfortunate that when there are these outages be it electricity or water, councillors have to face and answer to the frustrated residents. I can assure you that all DA councillors are working very hard under very difficult circumstances which are not of their own fault. Where there’s evidence of non-performance by any of our councillors, the DA has systems in place to address that both from the eThekwini Caucus level up to the provincial office,” said the DA eThekwini caucus leader.
Cllr Mthethwa also encouraged residents to follow the various WhatsApp Groups that Cllr Maharajh has made available as it is difficult to attend to individual communication when a councillor has to deal with endless service delivery challenges.
“Lastly, where there’s evidence of non performance the DA will no doubt act accordingly. But I must emphasise that in as much as I sympathise with residents who go for days without electricity I can not blame that on a councillor if the councillor has escalated the issues to relevant officials and is following it up because unfortunately that’s all a councillor can do,” said Cllr Mthethwa.
The office of the Speaker of eThekwini, which deals with complaints regarding councillors throughout eThekwini, had yet to comment by the time of print. According to Francis, a petition that calls for the removal of Cllr Maharajh has gained traction, garnering over 271 signatures in support.
