User:Bertus Esterhuysen/sandbox

Rammulotsi open-toilet saga

During the May 2011 local government elections the Rammulotsi open-toilet saga was central to political debate in the Republic of South Africa. The problems experienced with this specific government infrastructure project at Rammulotsi came to light a week before the local elections. It involved 1 831 toilets built by the then mayor of Viljoenskroon, Mantebu Mokgosi's husband's construction company that were not enclosed since construction started in 1995. Initially the ANC was unaware of the problems at Rammulotsi. According to Jackson Mthembu, the party had "evidence that Luthuli House didn’t know there were open toilets in Moqhaka municipality. It wasn’t brought to the attention of the ANC by anybody, not even Sicelo (Co-operative Governance minister),".

The matter was later referred to as the FreeState open-toilet saga by the media after the discovery of a similar problem in Tshiame near Harrismith and national political figures such as Julius Malema, Helen Zille and Mangosuthu Buthelezi got involved in the debate. The issue was seen as of national importance by the ANC government which took the Democratic Alliance ruled City of Cape Town to court over the Cape Town open-toilet saga a few months before. In September 2011 Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale said that the open toilet saga had given politicians leeway to play "political football" when acknowledging that the ruling party was responsible for the open toilets in Rammulotsi and in Tshiame. He later appointed ANC stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to head a national sanitation team consisting of 11 members, including a medical doctor, representatives of the SA Local Government Association, the water affairs department, the SA Municipal Workers' Union and people living in informal settlements to identify irregularities and malpractice, the scale of the problems, nature of sanitation problems and geographic extent...