Please find attached soundbite in English by Imaan Sayed Suliman.
- Six days into the strike, Ramotshere Moiloa Municipality has failed to adequately protect essential services, leaving residents and businesses to deal with the consequences.
- Mounting piles of uncollected refuse are turning Zeerust’s streets and sidewalks into a growing public health and environmental hazard.
- The DA demands an immediate contingency response, clear communication to residents and urgent intervention to resolve the labour dispute.
The situation in Ramotshere Moiloa Local Municipality is rapidly moving beyond a labour dispute and into a serious service delivery and governance crisis.
Municipal employees have been on strike since Friday, 4 September 2026. Six days later, residents and businesses are increasingly being left to carry the cost of the municipality’s failure to maintain essential services and implement an effective contingency response.
We call on Ramotshere Moiloa Local Municipality to immediately:
- Implement all legally permissible contingency measures to protect essential services;
- Address the mounting refuse backlog before it becomes an even greater public health threat;
- Provide residents and businesses with regular, transparent communication on the strike and service disruptions; and
- Intensify efforts to resolve the labour dispute and restore normal municipal operations.
The most visible sign of the municipality’s failure to maintain services is now playing out on the streets of Zeerust.
Refuse is accumulating across the town, with growing piles of uncollected waste along streets, corners and sidewalks.
This is not a minor inconvenience. It is a developing public health and environmental crisis.
Residents are walking past accumulated waste every day. Informal traders are operating alongside it. Businesses are expected to trade in an environment where refuse continues to build up.
Residents should not be forced to live with the consequences of a municipal dispute simply because the municipality has failed to put adequate contingency measures in place.
A strike cannot mean a shutdown of government. We fully recognise the right of workers to engage in lawful labour action. However, the municipality still has a responsibility to protect residents and ensure that essential services continue as far as legally possible.
A labour dispute does not suspend the municipality’s responsibility to the community.
Municipal management should have contingency measures in place to limit the impact of industrial action, particularly where essential services and public health are concerned.
Instead, residents are being left with mounting refuse, disrupted services and little clarity about when the situation will be resolved.
This lack of communication is unacceptable.
Residents deserve to know what measures are being implemented, which services remain operational, what steps are being taken to protect essential services and when they can expect a return to normality.
Ramotshere Moiloa cannot simply stand still while residents pay the price.
The municipality has a duty to govern, to plan for disruptions and to protect the communities it serves.
Six days is long enough. Residents need action, not excuses.