EXCLUSIVE: Vuwani a ghost town

Stores are closed and few people are seen out on the otherwise bustling streets.

It comes amid sporadic shutdowns of the area due to a dispute in the delivery of municipal services after Vuwani was included into the new municipality, Lim345, along with Malamulele - a decision residents have long protested. 

It's the third time the town has been brought to a standstill. 

Businesses have been forced to close their doors and schooling has severely been disrupted during a critical period on the school calendar. 

The leader of the Pro-Makhado Task Team, Nsovo Sambo, says although government has agreed to open municipal offices to aid service delivery, the group is against the offices operating under the Lim345 Municipality.

"President Jacob Zuma mandated the province and the national government to assist the Vhembe District in ensuring it renders services in Vuwani," he explains. 

The office was opened on 7 September. 

The minister of cooperative governance Des van Rooyen believes the Pro-Makhado Task Team is stifling progress in Vuwani. 

"The non-attendance of meetings by some stakeholders, like the Pro-Makhado Demarcation Task Team, flies in the face of efforts aimed at resolving challenges and this might suggest that they are negotiating in bad faith," van Rooyen says in a recent statement. 

Sambo says the current shutdown does not allow for children to go to school.

"The community has resolved that there be a total shutdown of services including schooling, businesses and transport. This is not an environment conducive to teaching and learning."

He says teachers and parents are part of the forum which agreed on the shutdown. 

With just over a month to the matric exams, there is great concern about whether or not learners will be ready.

The Inter-Ministerial Committee on Vuwani has condemned the shutdown and the critical impact it has had on learners, especially those in Grade 12.