Nigh on a year after devastating floods hit the KwaZulu-Natal coastline, Durban municipal leaders have agreed finally to publish a detailed 'action plan' to repair and upgrade the city's battered sewage and water infrastructure network.

The undertaking by the eThekwini municipality to publish its clean-up action plan within 30 days, comes in response to legal pressure by the ActionSA political party, which lodged an application against the city and other government departments in the Durban division of the High Court of South Africa on 16 November 2022.

In a court affidavit signed last week (31 March), eThekwini Water and Sanitation chief Ednick Msweli insisted that it was now safe to swim again at most Durban beaches -- and that the city's 8,500km network of water and sanitation pipelines was now "substantially operational".

Therefore, he argued, there was no reason why the high court should agree to ActionSA's request for the appointment of a team of independent engineers to prepare a report on how to "permanently restore" the city's water and sewage network.

Msweli said he did not deny that sewage bacteria readings had reached "unacceptable levels" at several Durban beaches when ActionSA first lodged its court papers. But nearly five months after court action was launched, there was no longer any need for an investigation into this issue.

He also hit back at claims that eThekwini had been "dilatory" in its response to the Durban...