DA looks to legal action to remove Mangaung Mayor

8 August 2019

The announcement this week that Moody’s has adjusted the credit rating of the Mangaung Metro downwards with three notches, leaving it on a B3 rating, is a warning that unless urgent steps are taken the Mangaung Metro will collapse.

Since the 2016 Local Government Elections, residents have borne the brunt of the serious maladministration and poor governance of the current ANC administration under Executive Mayor Olly Mlamleli.

The hallmark of this administration has been a stubborn political unwillingness to employ the most basic principles associated with good, clean and accountable governance:

- Despite continuously being warned to put in place the necessary systems to collect revenue, the rate of revenue collection still stands at nothing higher than 60%, while the budgets of the Metro routinely assumes a collection rate of at least 90%;

- For the past two financial years, the municipality paid R61 million to the company that failed to help it improve collection rates, as per contract;

- Government departments and other state institutions are some of the major defaulters, as was revealed just last month by the Provincial Department of Public Works who, in an answer to a DA question in the Free State Legislature admitted to owing Mangaung R325 449 531.57 for municipal services and property rates;

- Despite the poor municipal financial state, the office of the Mayor paid R1.7 million as a donation for the Miss Glamorous beauty contest. It is clear that the priorities of the Mayor are not in line with the needs of the people of Mangaung. This money could have been used for service delivery;

- Apparently there are more than 400 people employed in the office of the Mayor alone without clear job descriptions. This is blatant cadre deployment at the expense of service delivery; and

- Since taking office three years ago, Mayor Mlamleli has displayed the arrogance of someone who truly believes that she is untouchable and that she will remain untouchable.

Of course, having been picked by the former Premier of the Province and now Secretary-General of the ANC, Ace Magashule this attitude should not surprise anyone.

The result: R874 million being spent in the last financial year alone without the spending being authorised by the budget.

Further financial mismanagement includes R127 million being spent without following the proper supply chain management processes, making it impossible to verify whether value for money was obtained as well as R26 million being wasted by paying for unnecessary expenses.

A grim picture, but if one considers the very real impact all of this has had on the quality of life of our residents it is really infuriating. Service delivery failures include:

- Water, the most basic of necessities, being supplied in a haphazard manner to the point where residents are living with the very real fear of being without water for days on end at least once a month.

In the past 15 months people didn’t have water for 41 days

The reasons are well-known: non-payment by the municipality and being in arrears with about R419 million in respect of the costs of bulk water procured from Bloemwater.

Furthermore, in the last few days, the municipality recklessly decided not to allow purification treatment chemicals to be procured resulting in the shutdown of the Maselspoort purification plant.

- There are non-stop sewerage spillages everywhere in Mangaung Municipality.

- Refuse removal is infrequent and threatens the health and safety of residents. Trucks stand idle without diesel to operate.

- For the past two years the municipality appointed a Head of Municipal Police with a salary of over R1-million per annum, yet currently there is not a single municipal police officer employed by the municipality.

- The state of roads in Mangaung is appalling, there are potholes everywhere. The municipality doesn’t even have a maintenance plan or the budget.

The Auditor-General’s (AG) report into the financial statements of Mangaung for 2017/18 predicted the credit ratings downgrade of earlier this week and supplies further proof that our warnings over the last years, that this administration is leading us to the cliff, was not just scaremongering.

The AG had the following to say:

“Accountability for financial and performance management continue to deteriorate... Compliance with legislation is a major area of concern... This relates to financial statements, annual performance reports, expenditure management, procurement and contract management, consequence management and utilization of conditional grants.”

When we said two years ago that in order for Mangaung to be turned around Mayor Mlamleli and City Manager Mea will have to go, we were accused of politicking.

But listen to what the AG had to say about the leadership of this Metro:

“Most indicators for internal control are very poor, with both ‘leadership’ and ‘financial and performance management’ considered as in need of intervention.”

“Poor infrastructure maintenance with, for instance, no adequate evidence that there is a budget for maintenance of water infrastructure and no plan for road infrastructure maintenance” were other failures of the political and administrative leadership identified by the AG.

The credit downgrade of this week brought Mangaung to the edge of this cliff. For this Metro to have any chance of being viable in the medium and long term the economy needs to grow.

But a B3 credit rating will scare off any of the investors whose investments, taxes and utility payments could have bolstered the income of the municipality.

Moody’s has stated that a B3 rating signifies a higher risk of “default”, greater risk to investors and that investment in the circumstances will be deemed to be “speculative” in nature “subject to high credit risk.”

This B3 rating was of course necessitated by an inability of the Metro to pay the installments of the long term loans it has taken out previously to stay afloat.

The situation will not change while the current ANC administration is in charge. A leopard cannot change its spots.

While Mayor Mlamleli and City Manager Mea should immediately fall on their swords, it must be said that the ANC as a collective must take responsibility for this mess.

The way in which the collapse in governance in this Metro has been allowed and enabled is the rule rather than the exception when it comes to ANC governments.

There were more than enough warnings that Mangaung was slowly but undoubtedly heading for disaster. Yet, the reaction of the ANC provincial government and the National ANC government to these warnings have been wholly inadequate.

We have heard rwgularly over the last years about “turnaround plans and strategies”, “informal interventions” and “technical assistance”, but yet the ANC masters have allowed their ANC comrades in this Metro to continue on the same path, wrapping them in the security and knowledge that impunity would always be their safe word.

This impunity is further illustrated by the feeble and flimsy reasons supplied by the Speaker of this Metro for his refusal and failure to place a Motion of No Confidence (MONC)in Mayor Mlamleli, which we filed with him on 27 May this year.

Cllr Mxolisi Siyonzana has claimed in June that he is unsure whether he can take our MONC to Council, because, in his assessment it is too vague about why Council should express no confidence in the Mayor.

The real reason is of course that he, being not only the Speaker of the Metro but also a senior leader of the ANC in the Free State, knows full well that the ANC Caucus in the Metro is deeply divided between the Zuma-Magashule faction, seemingly led by the Mayor, and of which he apparently is also part.

He will rather protect the ANC and his failing crony than to act in the best interest of the residents of Mangaung.

- The DA has today announced that we are putting Speaker Sionzana on terms. We will, this afternoon, at the sitting of Council, hand a formal letter to him in which he is given seven working days to convene a special meeting of Council to debate and vote on our Motion of No Confidence, or he must be prepared to possibly face a Court application to compel him to do his job.

We are also consulting our lawyers urgently on this potential legal action. It is never our first choice that we need to resort to the legal route, but the ongoing obstructions of the ANC leave us no choice, and the people of Mangaung deserves action.

- Simultaneously, we will again write to both the Minister of Cooperative Governance, the MEC for Cooperative Governance and National Treasury to demand, on behalf of the residents of Mangaung that the administration of the Metro be taken away from the City Manager and placed in the hands of an administrator who must be willing and able to put the necessary measures in place to turn this ship around.

The situation in Mangaung is dire, but not yet fatal.

Unfortunately, if the ANC is left to its own devices, the downward spiral will only continue until Mangaung becomes the first Metro where governance totally collapses.

All indications are that the controlling Zuma-Magashule faction do not consider the well-being of the people of South Africa in its obsession to bring down their opponents.

This faction is prepared, in the midst of the continued looting spree, to tear down municipalities in order to score a point or two against the Ramaphosa faction, which in turn is as paralysed as someone bitten by a deadly cobra.

We cannot and will not allow this to happen. The residents of Mangaung deserve better and we will work tirelessly to restore governance that serves our people and restores dignity.

Issued by Patricia Kopane, DA Free State Provincial Leader, 8 August 2019