Pretoria - Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka will this week dispatch a high level team to Mpumalanga to address service delivery challenges there.
A similar team will be sent to all the country's provinces before the end of next month where MECs will give reports on the state of their municipalities.
This comes as the country has been rocked by service delivery protests in at least five provinces in recent weeks.
Addressing reporters on Tuesday, Minister Shiceka said the nature of the protests have demonstrated that people have raised quite a lot of issues for some time and that the issues had "bottled up and exploded".
"We have agreed that the team is going there this week and we want it to get to the bottom of the problem.
"If there is a need for resources; we will be able to mobilise resources to ensure that things are done. We believe that these matters need to be attended to and addressed," Minister Shiceka said.
The team, to comprise senior officials from the department, will work with provincial government departments in a bid to get to the bottom of the problem.
It will compile a report to be tabled to the minister and all the relevant stakeholders in government.
Minister Shiceka blamed part of the problem on the lack of rapid response by officials to some of the basic service delivery needs of communities.
"This has been caused by the fact that we haven't responded on time to some issues," said Minister Shiceka.
He said there were stacks of letters that communities had written to the leadership of the Mpumalanga government and these letters were taken to the highest office of the province.
"There was no responsiveness on these issues and what was clear was that the structures for public participation were not functioning the way communities would want them," Minister Shiceka said.
In Mpumalanga, chaos erupted last Friday as Mashishing residents burned tyres on the streets and destroyed property. At Marambane, a stones throw away, similar scenes were seen as residents blockaded the streets with stones, leading to police declaring the situation uncontrollable.
In a recent incident, residents of Diepsloot in Gauteng also embarked on a protest causing havoc in the area. At least eight people were arrested for public violence there.
The minister said it has become clear that there was a lack of capacity in some municipalities and that resources were not properly used -something which had angered communities.
The department has identified eight municipalities in Mpumalanga where there are immense challenges.
Minister Shiceka said the delegation will visit the municipalities to understand what the challenges were and the process is expected to be concluded on 21 August.
However, the minister also warned that those who commit crime and hide behind service delivery challenges will be unmasked and prosecuted.
"We have come to the conclusion that says a lot needs to be done to reengineer and turn around municipalities, however that doesn't give a right to anybody to use violence to air their grievances.
"Violence infringes on the rights of other people, including loss of life, people being killed - it can't be justified," the minister said.
He said people had a right to protest but this should be done within the parameters of the law.
"The law will take its course to deal with people who used the legitimate demands of the people, to commit crime," he said.
