By Rafieka Williams
The DA’s mayoral candidate, Retief Odendaal, has called on Eastern Cape’s MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Zolile Williams, to investigate maladministration in the Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) municipality, saying that 25% of streetlights not working is a “crisis”.
“Over 10,000 of the metro’s 40,000 streetlights are non-operational, which has plunged the municipality into darkness, allowing crime to run rampant and lives to be lost in road accidents,” Retief said on Wednesday.
Latest statistics by Arrive Alive showed that Eastern Cape was one of only two provinces to report an increase in road fatalities during the 2025 easter holiday season, while the rest of the country reflected a decrease in road fatalities.
Echoing the words of Cyril Ramaphosa, Odendaal made reference to the ANC president’s national local government roll call for ANC councillors to do better.
On Monday, Ramaphosa listed fixing streetlights as one of the priority areas to be attended to by local government.
“By the end of the next one hundred days, visible progress must be registered in core service delivery areas. Potholes must be repaired, refuse must be collected on schedule, water leaks must be fixed without delay, and streetlights must be functional,” Ramaphosa said.
Odendaal said in NMB, the streetlight repair contract with the municipality was abandoned over a year ago and out of 27 street repair trucks, only four are operational.
“The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality’s failure to maintain its streetlights is a serious dereliction of duty that compromises public safety and hinders economic activity,” Odendaal said.
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