The bitter battle over the leadership of the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) in KTC has divided the community into two factions and crippled the development plans and progress of the area.
Some leaders of Sanco alleged that there was no longer peace in the community and the endless fight over the leadership has caused heated verbal wars.
These leaders alleged that the tensions erupted at the beginning of 2012, soon after they had elected their new ward councillor, Khaya Yozi, at the end of 2011.
Lumkile Msila, who claims to be the chairperson of Sanco, said in 2011 they were also elected with their ward councillor to serve as leaders of Sanco for a period of two years.
But he said they were shocked when they were informed by some residents that there was a group of people being elected as leaders of this organisation while they were still serving their time.
He made it clear that was when their relationship as leaders with their ward councillor took a knock.
Mr Msila said therefore the community of KTC asked them to continue to serve as leaders until their battle had been resolved.
He said they discovered that those who were elected were friends of Mr Yozi and had no desire in developing the community.
He said over the years they had been sidelined from taking part in talks about the development.
Mr Msila said Mr Yozi had divided the area and over the years they had tried countless times to engage with him to resolve this matter.
But he said all their efforts proved to be unsuccessful.
He said when they were elected into leadership they handed Mr Yozi their year plan.
Among other things, he said, they informed the councillor that 400 residents had been moved to Delft and 600 were still waiting to be moved there.
He said the councillor promised to speed up this process and tackle some of the challenges facing the community. But, he said until now the residents had not been allocated their houses and had not received any communication from their ward councillor.
However, he said they discovered that some of the houses that were meant to be given to these people had been occupied by others.
“There are houses that have cracks and the provincial government promised to fix them. But he has failed to ensure that they are fixed. We had vacant fields that were designated for recreational facilities but have now been occupied by residents. We are the legit leaders of this organisation.
Mr Yozi went around the area saying that our time has come to an end. That created problems,” he said.
Mr Msila said they had proposed that both leaderships of Sanco in the area be dissolved and an interim committee be elected in meantime until these problems are resolved.
Mr Yozi refuted the claims that there were two Sanco leaderships.
He said Mr Msila and his crew had reached their time of office and should have left their positions.
He said a new leadership had been elected with Lucky Matthews as the chairperson of Sanco and he had no influence of who should be elected or not. He said Mr Msila is refusing to recognise the current leaders of Sanco.
He said it was made clear that the other people who were meant to be moved to Delft would be allocated houses near Kuils River when the development in that area was done.
Lucky Matthews, who claims to be the current chairperson of Sanco, said Mr Msila and his crew are the old structure of the organisation in the area.
He said his term had also ended in 2016 but because of the fighting in the community they had not been able to elect new leadership. He said Mr Msila wanted to be leader until they die and that was wrong.
