What new monsters will be unleashed as yet another mayoral change rocks Tshwane?

Dear DM168 readers,

On Thursday, municipal employees in my metro, the City of Tshwane, danced and cheered as the ANC, EFF and ActionSA voted out the DA mayor, Cilliers Brink, and the local government coalition of the DA, ACDP, Freedom Front Plus and IFP.

As a resident of this beautiful but broke and broken capital city, I see no reason for jubilation over even more chaos and yet another new local government. Since I moved here in 2017, Tshwane has had five mayors. And now, just two years before the next local government elections, we will be have yet  another mayor, depending on whatever the ANC, ActionSA and the EFF have up their sleeves.

I am pretty wary when the people cheering yet another change of local government are exactly the ones who are meant to be serving the city’s residents with professionalism and non-partisanship.

Auditor-General (AG) Tsakani Maluleke’s reports into Tshwane’s financial affairs are instructive. In her MFMA 2022/23 report, she revealed an issue that benefited quite a few colleagues of the jubilant workers. The City paid salaries to employees appointed on a fixed-term contract to whom no work was allocated, as there were no job descriptions for their roles. Essentially workers got paid for doing nothing.

After the AG’s office flagged this particular irregularity, the City instituted disciplinary action to dismiss the officials involved.

One of the newly ousted DA mayor and coalition’s priorities was to root out corruption in the Supply Chain Management Division by introducing checks and balances, resulting in an increase in declared irregular expenditure.

This exposure led to an increase of R2.4-billion in declared irregular expenditure. This is massive and needs to be expeditiously addressed by council.  Will the ANC, EFF and Action SA coalition make this a priority?

In July this year my colleague Ferial Haffajee wrote about what could very possibly be the main reason for the ousting of Brink and the DA led coalition government of Tshwane.

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. Matjila is said to have business interests in waste management, water tankers in Hammanskraal and security.

Which makes me  wonder what game  Herman Mashaba and Action SA are playing by pulling out of the DA coalition.

On Thursday while driving back to Tshwane from a meeting in Johannesburg, I heard Herman Mashaba explain on radio why he stabbed his former coalition partners in the back and joined the ANC and EFF. His reasons were pretty shallow. He said he did not want to wait for the DA to stab Action SA in the back after he heard that the DA was in talks with the ANC. Its not about us the residents, its about politics.

Mashaba also confidently assured us that he supported the ANC motion on condition that  the current ActionSA deputy mayor Dr. Nasiphi Moya be voted in as mayor. Mashaba might be in for a rude surprise.

Right after Mashaba spoke on the radio, the ANC's Matjila  contradicted him and said the ANC led coalition had not decided who will be the mayor or part of the new mayoral committee, they just wanted Brink out.

Why would the ANC, EFF and Mashaba want to take over the reins of a city that they all claim is  massively dysfunctional and has a poor record of service delivery to poor Black  communities in particular? Are Brink and the politicians in the coalition solely responsible for this lack of delivery? Or is it the poor performance and even poorer consequence management of the civil servants meant to serve the people of Tshwane that  might also be responsible?

Mdumiseni Ntuli, the ANC’s chief whip, said as much in a Mail & Guardian article. He  said he believed the ANC might be punished in the next local government elections over failed services in the capital if it takes power now. But clearly Mr Matjila an his sidekicks are more interested in the short terms gains of wresting power now than in working to win the confidence of voters in 2026.

I  agree with Ntuli. Why not let the voters see the  incumbent coalition fail – if it is as callous, racist and uncaring as the opposition says it is? Why not work hard at campaigning and winning over voters over  the next two years so that voters can oust a nonperforming local government?

The ANC Tshwane leadership seem oblivious to the fact that in the 2021 elections the ANC only attained 34.63% of the vote, trailed closely by the DA’s 32.03%. Surely a party that seriously wants to prove that the DA coalition sucks would focus on winning back the trust of its voters, supporting the cleaning up of graft and ghost workers?

This coup smacks of power for the sake of power, and of being a bit upset at the discovery and throttling of the food chain after leaks were found by the AG and acted on by the municipality. Sadly, this does not seem to have much to do with serving the poor or indeed any residents of Tshwane.

In June last year, journalist Reg Rumney reminded us  of a Noseweek article about dodgy procurement practises by the ANC government in Tshwane in 2015.

Jean Wallace wrote in 2016 of the rotten practices in “supply chain management” that the newly elected coalition government faced. Among many rip-offs were multiple orders for tens of thousands of small cans of Kiwi Shoe Polish – for what purpose no one  knows – at three times the retail price.

Rumney wrote that the  tipping point, which started the city’s descent into financial penury, came under the rule of the luxury-brand-loving ANC mayor who is now our electricity minister. The infamous PEU R950-million smart meter contract of 2012 awarded by Kgosientsho “Sputla” Ramokgopa was declared unconstitutional and set aside by the North Gauteng High Court in 2017.

Now ousted Mayor Brink  last year described the PEU contract as “a financial disaster for the City” from which Tshwane still hasn’t recovered.

Rumney wrote that it is not only the ghost of the PEU contract the City has to deal with but, apparently, also an inherited culture of corruption in its procurement division.

As Cilliers Brink walked out of the council building after the vote of no confidence on Thursday,  a Mail & Guardian reporter heard  one delighted municipal worker saying “We are free from the monsters”.

I'm not so sure  we residents, poor or middle class, are free from any monsters who are playing politics with our lives and livelihoods. Its going to take 14 days to find out what monsters are now being unleashed in Tshwane to replace the recently ousted. We're going to have to brace ourselves for yet another bumpy ride.

If any of you have any thoughts on this or experiences to share, write to me at [email protected]

In this week’s  DM168, Ferial Haffajee  finds out why the Department of Justice custodians of the massive State Capture data files are frantically trying to lock their “profile”, and Rebecca Davis explains the background to the NPA and Department of Justice battle over the Zondo Commission data that is a stumbling block to prosecutions of the many state capture accused. 

Yours in defence of truth,

Heather

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.