BusinessLive reports that President Cyril Ramaphosa on Saturday promised to come down hard on government officials who were failing to provide services to communities.  

He was addressing the community of Ekuvukeni outside Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), which has been plagued by service delivery challenges including lack of water‚ broken sewerage pipes causing human waste to stream down the streets and no adequate housing.  The community has been engaging in protests by blocking roads‚ burning infrastructure and preventing children from attending school for about a month.  Ramaphosa said he would make it his personal mission to ensure the provision of water in the area.  “I will put a torch from Pretoria to see to it that these problems are being fixed.  We will bring a rapid response team to make sure that things are going well,” he promised.  Ramaphosa asked the community not to punish the ANC at the 8 May general election for “things that will be fixed”.  The community has vowed not to take part in the upcoming poll.

• Read the full original of Zimasa Matiwane’s report on the above story at BusinessLive

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