Dispatching tainted Ministers to NW district municipalities will not yield favourable results

4 September 2020

Note to Editors: Find attached soundbites in English by DA North West Spokesperson on Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (COGHSTA), Freddy Sonakile.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) in North West has noted with shock the announcement by Minister in the Presidency, Jackson Mthembu, that several ministers will be dispatched to district municipalities in an attempt to bring political stability, assist with Covid-19 interventions and address service delivery challenges.

Minister Gwede Mantshe has been delegated to Bojanala Platinum, Minister Nkhensani Kubayi-Ngubane to Dr Kenneth Kaunda, Deputy Minister Obed Bapela to Ngaka Modiri Molema and Maggie Soytu to Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District.

This is simply a disguised placing of district municipalities under national administration in a similar fashion that departments have been placed under Section 100 of the Constitution.

These Ministers ought to be in Parliament fast-tracking a regulatory framework that will give effect to Sections 100, 139 and 154 of the Constitution, in order to close the existing legislative vacuum that is hindering the process of administrations from functioning optimally.

The history and allegations against some of these deployed ministers hardly inspires any confidence that their visit will bear fruit of clean governance and service delivery.

Minister Mantashe was one of the top six within the ranks of the ANC when former President Zuma robbed this country blind and Sizavox, the IT company founded by Minister Kubayi-Ngubane’s husband, made it to the news after winning a multi-million Rand tender to supply IT services to the North West Provincial Legislature.

Both Ministers Kubayi-Ngubane and Deputy Minister Obed Bapela have been ANC NEC deployees to this province since 2018 and yet the situation in municipalities has been deteriorating under their political watch.

Based on the Auditor-General’s report, the only way to root out corruption is to do away with officials who are responsible for the dilapidated state of municipalities, which include mayors, municipal managers and politicians. No number of tainted ministers dispatched to finish off what is left off the municipal resources will fix anything.

We are of the view that this is just another political game by the ANC that stems from its fear of losing votes in next year’s municipal election - a fear that is validated by its drastic loss of support during the lockdown period.

The DA will closely monitor these dispatchments the same way we have been monitoring the Section 100 national interventions into provincial departments, which has not yielded any results to write home about.

Issued by Freddy Sonakile, DA North West Spokesperson on COGHSTA, 4 September 2020