ANC Tshwane boss threatened to collapse council during waste tender contract interests saga, police told

Tshwane finance MMC Jacqui Uys. (Photo: Neil McCartney / The Citizen)

By Ferial Haffajee

22 Jul 2024

ANC regional secretary George Matjila allegedly warned Tshwane’s head of finance to cancel a waste collection improvement plan or face a motion of no confidence to oust the mayor.

The ANC’s Tshwane regional secretary, George Matjila, allegedly warned Tshwane’s finance boss, Jacqui Uys, that the party would move to collapse the council in a motion of no confidence if she did not reverse a plan to tighten the city’s multimillion-rand contracts to collect waste.

Pretoria is a dirty city — its municipal waste management capacity has been eroded over years of cadre deployment and mismanagement. Waste management has been outsourced and is a honeycomb for often ANC-linked tenderpreneurs who benefit from the budgeted R700-million annual contracts.

“It’s open knowledge that Mr Matjila had a vested interest in the preceding Waste Management Tender,” said Uys in an affidavit signed at the Garsfontein Police Station in Pretoria on 17 July.

“This is borne out by the fact that on several occasions Mr Matjila personally demanded that outstanding invoices be immediately settled by the city so that could ‘pay his people’.

“This interest appears to have continued with the award of the new tender, save for the fact that conditions attached thereto preclude him from benefiting.”

Uys has asked for a police investigation into attempted corruption in terms of section 21 of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act.

Tshwane finance MMC Jacqui Uys. (Photo: Neil McCartney / The Citizen)

“I don’t have any contract with the city,” said Matjila when asked by Daily Maverick.

He confirmed calling Uys.

“Me and Jacqui, the MMC, have a cordial relationship and we speak from time to time. I did call Jacqui and she never answered. I sent her a WhatsApp. She called back and I told her about a group of township subcontractors who stormed our ANC lekgotla.

“They wanted to see the mayor. She said she would arrange that and said we can meet around 3pm the following day. I said it’s impossible as we’re attending our lekgotla. That’s what happened,” said Matjila.

The meeting was never held as the ANC threatened a motion of no confidence last week. While Matjila denies business interests, Uys has confirmed these in the affidavit.

Officials in the city and from the ANC say it is open knowledge that Matjila has subcontracts with Tshwane in water tankering (focused on Hammanskraal), waste management and security.

While Matjila and Uys both confirmed cordial relations, it is irregular for party bosses to call political office bearers or staff to advance their own or allied business interests.

The Tshwane council is DA-led under Mayor Cilliers Brink. The DA holds 69 seats to the ANC’s 75, and the coalition is fragile and can collapse under any pressure.

No city for old trucks

Service delivery in Tshwane, like that in Johannesburg, is often near collapse in chaotic coalitions struck in 2021 when no parties won governing majorities in the local government elections.

Waste management is an arena where political contestation usually plays out, like a damaging strike in 2023 (see this report). This month, City Manager Johann Mettler introduced a new waste management contract for providers. It included three new rules: no truck can be older than nine years old and all must have a valid registration licence (about 70% of previous contractors could not produce one) and a GPS.

That led to the no-confidence motion threat because most contractors didn’t make the grade. The city also tightened subcontracting rules, as political interests are veiled when beneficial ownership is unclear.

“On the first day of deployment, vehicles were inspected and only qualifying ones were allowed to work. But many of the subcontractors were not willing to adhere to the subcontracting conditions. They blocked some landfill sites and escalated intimidation,” said the City of Tshwane on 22 July, adding that a contractor’s truck had been pelted with stones in Mamelodi on the way to a landfill.

“Old trucks break down and [we] suffer these frequently,” said Tshwane spokesperson Selby Bokaba.

Tracking was vital because a line of sight was essential for outsourced services. Bokaba said the 2023 strike had shown that waste managers told communities that refuse had been collected when it had not been. The city pays by tonnage and loads, and the tracking would allow better auditing.

“There’s no room to manoeuvre or cheat,” he said.

In addition, when trucks caused damage, the city had to pay, and better controls would cut these costs. Ekurhuleni and Johannesburg only contract with owners of waste trucks that are not older than three or five years.

Waste is a gold mine

Tshwane’s city council has a budget of R50.6-billion and it is stretched to plug gaps, deal with infrastructure breakdowns and accommodate a rapidly growing population.

It spends R12-billion a year on staff and another R4-billion on contracted services. The city is supposed to provide these services, but because of its rundown administration outsourcing has become the norm.

Over decades, ANC-linked tenderpreneurs in Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane have commandeered contracts for waste, water tankering and security in all three cities.

This, say insiders, explains why the GNU power-sharing concept failed in Gauteng, where Premier Panyaza Lesufi refused to strike a regional deal to replicate the national plan. Regional secretaries like Matjila put the kibosh on a provincial unity government, they say.

Read more: Provincial capture wins as Panyaza Lesufi goes his own way in Gauteng

Contracting is huge money, but it also explains why the cities are all buckling under financial strain and applying administered prices (like electricity tariffs), plunging their citizens into a cost-of-living crisis.

It explains why the ANC’s vote share in Gauteng splattered to only 34% in the May election, say party insiders who want the system cleaned up.

Tshwane spends R680-million a year on contracted-out waste management and R378-million on contracting with water tanker companies.

In budget documents, the city says it wants to reduce contracted services costs by investing in capital expenditure. But officials say this will ignite more “trip-wires” as politically connected business forums lose out.

Matjila is a powerful regional ANC boss who controls Tshwane. In 2016, City Press reported that he was allegedly the mastermind behind city protests that brought the capital to a standstill because of opposition to the mooted appointment of Thoko Didiza as mayor. DM

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No city for old trucks

Waste is a gold mine