Lucas Ledwaba
Gauteng’s cooperative governance and traditional affairs MEC Lebogang Maile has fired a salvo at the DA administration in what appears to be a continuation of hostilities in the ongoing battle for running Tshwane metro.
Maile, who last week announced a decision to challenge a North Gauteng High Court’s ruling that annulled his decision to dissolve the metro in March, took a swipe at the city’s former administrators.
He was announcing progress made by a team of administrators he appointed following the provincial executive committee’s decision to dissolve the Tshwane council.
But DA councillor and mayoral candidate in Tshwane, Randall Williams hit back at Maile Thursday saying that that his report was “a shocking speech that was filled with a litany of lies, in an attempt to satisfy his lust for power.”
He accused Maile of repeatedly trying “to justify and defend his unlawful decision to place the Tshwane Council under administration at every opportunity he gets.”
Maile said since the team of administrators was appointed 50 days ago they “found a municipality that was wrought with financial mismanagement and irregularities.”
Maile said the team of administrators deployed to the city had tried “to rescue the City of Tshwane from the perilous state that it was in when they took over.”
He said this was evidenced by the fact that the Municipal Public Accounts Committee report indicated that the City of Tshwane (COT) investigated R1.7 billion of R6.9 billion unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, “with no indication whatsoever of whether any of this money would ever be recovered.”
Maile further charged that the city “has been highly litigious, with the contingent liability for the City currently sitting at R5 billion as a result of that.”
He revealed that the City has a total of 645 legal disputes lodged against it.
He said the team of administrators has developed a litigation strategy “meant to remedy this situation and restore compliance to SCM and National Treasury directives as well as to ensure that we settle some of the cases outside court processes.”
He said the Financial Misconduct Board (FDB) has concluded an assessment of completed investigations into allegations of financial misconduct.
“Some of the cases in question will require expert prosecutorial services in financial misconduct,” he said.
“This was as a result of irregularities and [&] maladministration in the awarding of tenders in the City. The team of administrators is in the process of investigating such irregularities, as identified by the Auditor
General,” Maile said in a series of tweets.
“The COT had a track record of returning grants allocated to service delivery due to poor performance. The spending on the UDSG as at 30 January 2020 amounted to 23% meaning that there was a high risk
of losing that grant money due to poor performance in implementing USDG work.”
Maile further revealed that the City is in the process of appointing a permanent city manager.
“The process is underway. This will bring about greater accountability and administrative as well as institutional stability in the City going forward,” he said.
The DA had planned to hold a council meeting on Saturday 9 May pending government serving legal to appeal the high court ruling in the Constitutional Court.
The papers were filed and the EFF which was in coalition with the DA also announced plans to challenge the high court ruling. This led to failure by the DA to hold the council meeting in which they were planning to appoint a mayor and city manager.
However the DA through its mayoral canditate Randall Williams contradicted Maile’s assessment of its perfomance saying it welcomed “the impressive City of Tshwane’s 2018/19 annual report, which reflects the achievements of the DA-led administration during the past year.”
Williams said when the DA took over leadership of the City of Tshwane from the ANC in 2016 it was faced with having to address the high levels of irregular expenditure incurred by the previous ANC administration, such as illegal contracts it had entered into.
He said this included the illegal PEU meter, Broadband and Fleet contracts, which had a disastrous effect on the city’s finances.
“Maile cannot blame the DA-led administration for these contracts that were inherited from the previous ANC administration. Maile must think that the residents of Tshwane are stupid if he believes that he can blame the DA-led administration for the reckless and illegal tenders his comrades entered into,” he said.
The DA said in a statement the City increased its accumulated surplus from R25.5 billion at the end of 2018 to R27.3 billion at the end of 2019, an increase of R2.8 billion over the previous year.
“This speaks to the strict financial management that was implemented and the cost savings that were achieved during this period,” he said.
He said the City also achieved a two notch investment upgrade which reflected the city’s improved liquidity position over the year.
“It also continued to provide a reliable and consistent service delivery in relation to the provision of electricity, water, sanitation and waste collection. The significant improvement in electricity service delivery was partly due to the city scaling up the rollout of prepaid electricity meters,” he said.
Williams revealed that a total of 294 875 meters were installed by the end of 2019 compared with 280 000 at the end of 2018 and that the City also connected 6 048 households to a full metered water supply across the seven regions in the city.
He added that approximately 179 informal settlements were provided with sanitation and that infrastructure development was also at the forefront of the city’s programme with 27 371m of water infrastructure upgrade across the city.
He said this included areas such as Ga-Rankuwa Industrial, Hammanskraal, Clubview, Garsfontein and Moreleta Park.
“The progress highlighted in the Annual report speaks to the successes of the DA’s term in office and further debunks the arguments put forward by the Gauteng Provincial Government and Cooperative Governance MEC Lebogang Maile that the city needed to be placed under administration.
“The decision to place the city under administration has in fact negatively affected the good progress that was seen under the DA leadership and sabotaged the successes that have been achieved to date,”
Williams said. The ANC and EFF’s actions are seen as a strategy to frustrate the DA’s ambitions of retaining the city in next year’s local government election whose date has not been set yet.
