Tshwane mayor denies links to water tender corruption

2026-03-20 - 08:11

Tshwane executive mayor Nasiphi Moya has publicly denied any association with a man identified on social media as a key figure in the “Tshwane water mafia,” saying she had never encountered the individual before. A popular social media account claimed the man was operating a fly-by-night company and working alongside the mayor to secure municipal tenders. Moya responded swiftly and pointedly. “Ehh, you’ve completely missed the mark here. I’m neither corrupt nor tied to any service providers for personal gain – that’s by design, not by accident. You’ll have to try a different angle,” she wrote, before adding: “Also... first time I’m seeing this gentleman. Who is he?” Hammanskraal water crisis: A 20-year problem finally addressed Beyond the social media storm, Moya has been vocal about what she considers the defining achievements of her administration. Chief among them is resolving the decades-long water crisis in Hammanskraal, a community north of Pretoria that went without clean, safe water for generations. She described the scale of the crisis as something that could only be fully understood once lives were lost. “Sometimes you don’t understand the significance of the crisis until you have a loss of life. We lost people in Hammanskraal,” she said. The weight of taking on the issue was not lost on her peers either. Moya recalled being cautioned against making Hammanskraal water a priority when she was appointed deputy executive mayor. In January 2025, Moya said she drank the first glass of clean and safe water in the community, a moment she described as deeply symbolic. “If there was a kid that was born there 20 years ago, that was the first time they saw water flowing, water dirty or not, water flowing out of their taps,” she said. Moya made it clear that she did not want residents to be defined by the hardships they had endured. “When it’s done, I want the community of Hammanskraal not to be reminded where they come from. I want them to normalise it as if it’s always been like that. Because sometimes we want to imprison residents with gratitude. No, that was never even supposed to happen,” she said. ALSO READ: Tshwane mayor makes Madlanga Commission request Ikageng reservoir: Six years without water, restored in months A similar story of long-standing neglect and eventual intervention unfolded in Ikageng, where a reservoir was allegedly seized by armed individuals during the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving residents without water for six years. Moya said the situation in Ikageng was compounded by the fact that the infrastructure was already in place but had been rendered inaccessible. “We had a reservoir, we had the pipes, we had the infrastructure. We used to have water until that reservoir was hijacked,” she said. She noted that one of the individuals named in connection with the hijacking was also mentioned in what she called the “Matlang Accordion.” According to Moya, armed individuals were guarding the reservoir, and the community was left without access to a resource it had previously relied on. Once her administration made restoring the supply a priority, the turnaround was swift. Officials were tasked with identifying needs, and weekly progress reports were compiled. Within two to three months, water was flowing to Ikageng taps again. Mayor calls on communities to hold politicians accountable Alongside her account of service delivery wins, Moya used the platform to deliver a sharp message to residents about the need to reclaim their civic power from politicians, including those within her own sphere. She argued that communities had for too long allowed themselves to be divided along political lines, to their own detriment. “Community members must stop this thing of outsourcing their powers to politicians,” she said, adding that unity was the only real source of community strength. “I promise you they will never overpower us for as long as they allow us politicians to divide them using a T-shirt.” Moya was direct about what she saw as the misplaced loyalties that kept communities vulnerable. “Are you choosing a t-shirt over your children? Because at the end of the day, you don’t live with politicians every day. You live with the community,” she said. She called particularly on black communities to become more actively involved in civic processes, acknowledging that historical political mobilisation had made party loyalty feel natural. However, she argued that the future demanded something different. In her view, politicians should be elected, tasked with forming workable coalitions, and then held rigorously to account for the full duration of their terms. “For the five years, hold us the hell out,” she said. READ NEXT: Probing the rot beats ‘fixing’ potholes