The Madibeng municipality has added seven tractors to its fleet to accelerate service delivery to communities and the announcement was met with a barrage of negative comments on its Facebook page.

According to municipal spokesperson, Tumelo Tshabalala, the tractors and slashers will be used for horticultural maintenance, which includes the upkeep of the municipality’s sidewalks, parks, sports grounds and cemeteries.
The post on the municipality’s Facebook page elicited comments by residents expressing their disbelief in service delivery and mistrust of the municipality’s intentions.
Some of the comments read as follows:

“Which service delivery?”
“This is too funny!”
“Your priorities are clearly misplaced.
“You don’t have money to maintain essential services, pay water and electricity bill but buy tractors?? That sounds pretty stupid to me.”
“How about rather fixing the roads for change.”
“They can’t even fix the robots…”
“Tractors for the upkeep of parks, cemeteries and sidewalks What a joke.”
“What parks?”
“What about water and electricity in some areas without electricity? How are u addressing that? Community needs that.”
“I don’t know about horticulture, but this is awesome – 8 tractor, next we expect at least 16 qualified or licensed drivers for this machines – employed full time.”
“Ke sure tender ya di tractors tse was worth 50 million. (I am sure the tender for the tractors was R50 million)”
“If they don’t have diesel the 7 tractors are useless. How many times in the past refuge removal could not take place because the trucks were dry. You have to understand the People don’t have reason to trust you because of your history that speaks louder than words.”
“Essential services first.
“A person can still live for months or even years without a park. But can’t survive even 5 hours without water. Who is responsible for all this stupid planning mara?”
“Who voted for that nonsense?”
“I give up this municipality”