Ngaka Modiri Molema District: Water Authority for 800,000 People Dissolved After Officials "Denied and Disputed" Every AG and Water Affairs Finding

The district municipality responsible for water to Mahikeng, Ditsobotla, Ramotshere Moiloa, Tswaing and Ratlou had absented itself from provincial engagement since 2012; at an August 2014 meeting its officials "denied and disputed all concerns raised by the Auditor General and the Department of Water Affairs in a very defensive manner". The province dissolved the council on 3 September 2014, and the Constitutional Court declined to halt it on 18 November 2014.

The Record The Evidence What Was Lost Implicated Institutions The Paper Trail

The Record

Ngaka Modiri Molema is one of two "water-distressed" district municipalities in the North West, reliant on boreholes to supply about 800,000 people across Mahikeng, Ditsobotla, Ramotshere Moiloa, Tswaing and Ratlou — four of which are already in this archive as local municipalities in collapse. The district is the Water Services Authority above all of them.

The NCOP record of 14 September 2014 sets out the province's case: the district had absented itself from engagement meetings since 2012, and when it did attend in August 2014 its officials "denied and disputed all concerns raised by the Auditor General and the Department of Water Affairs in a very defensive manner". MEC Collen Maine dissolved the council on 3 September 2014 under s139(1)(c) and appointed an administrator on 26 September. The district went to the Constitutional Court on an urgent basis to stop the dissolution; on 18 November 2014, in Ngaka Modiri Molema District Municipality v Chairperson, North West Provincial Executive Committee [2014] ZACC 31, the court refused, noting that the only urgency was that residents were being deprived of water and sanitation. The district was named again in the SAHRC's November 2025 North West report.