Dear NMB, your Microsoft .NET Framework Version 4.0.30319 predates 2022 and is no longer supported by Microsoft.
After reporting on a glitch on the Municipal Web Site this morning I hit a “Yellow Screen of Death” on the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality Website this afternoon.
Giving truth to the axiom that Government is not agile one could say that this is a classic example of legacy government IT infrastructure – i.e. the lack of management and accountability.
The text mentioning .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319 on that error page means the city’s website is running on web technology that was built more than a decade ago and has long since passed its official retirement date.
Why Is This Page Crashing?
The /damlevels tool is designed to fetch and display dynamic metrics about local reservoirs like the Kouga, Churchill, and Impofu dams.
When it errors out, it is usually because of:
- Broken Data Links: The website is trying to pull data from a backend municipal database (like water usage dashboards or engineering spreadsheets). If that database goes offline, is moved, or undergoes an internal IT change, the ancient .NET code doesn’t know how to handle the failure and crashes completely.
- Database System Overload: In times of high traffic – such as when residents flock to check the dam levels after a major South African Weather Service warning or sudden water outages – the old architecture easily runs out of resources and collapses.
The Real-World Irony
What makes the failure of this specific page so frustrating for Gqeberha residents is that it usually crashes exactly when people need it most. Nelson Mandela Bay has faced massive public scrutiny over its “full dams, dry taps” paradox. While heavy rains frequently top up the actual reservoirs, high muddy water (turbidity) and severe leaks in aging pipes regularly cause localized water cuts. When citizens go online to see what is happening to the supply, the outdated web server buckles under the user traffic.
Where to Get the Real Dam Data Instead
Since the website is failing, you can skip the broken page and find the identical official water statistics using these alternative channels:
- The MyNMB Dam Levels Page: The team at MyNMB track the dam levels from the municipal web site. via social media and from Municipal WhatsApp media gropups.
- The Official NMBM App: The municipality pushes live data dashboards, customer care tools, and outage notifications directly through the NMBM Mobile Application, which bypasses the legacy desktop site. [1]
- Direct PDF Repository: The city frequently uploads its raw, unformatted water reports directly as documents. If you search for the latest dashboard in the NMBM Data Repository, you can often find the updated PDF files manually.
- Social Media: The city’s technical teams post regular emergency press releases and water treatment works status updates via the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality Facebook Page.
