Van Rooyen: A failed Mayor, a sacked Finance Minister, unqualified to be COGTA Minister 

14 December 2015

The Democratic Alliance (DA) notes with grave concern the appointment of David van Rooyen as the new Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, replacing Pravin Gordhan.

Van Rooyen’s earlier appointment as Minister of Finance on Wednesday was met with a massive public outcry and a significant negative response from global and local markets. His newest appointment should be viewed with similar scepticism, because he is simply unqualified for Ministerial office.

Reports at the weekend allege that under his watch as Mayor of Merafong, the municipal deficit increased fivefold. Unauthorised, irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure increased dramatically too under van Rooyen’s mayoralty. Van Rooyen also oversaw the enormous increase in his own Mayoral salary, up 69.72% during his five years in office, and he oversaw the increase in Executive Councillors salaries by 76.67%

Within just his second year in the Mayoral Office in Merafong, van Rooyen oversaw R 3,177,859.00 unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, up from zero in the year he came to office.

The new Minister will be expected to take the lead in turning around the many dysfunctional municipalities which the National Government itself admits number over one third of all SA municipalities, and therefore van Rooyen, as a novice Minister and failed Mayor himself, is wholly inappropriate for the Ministerial office. 

He will also have to deal with the mess his predecessor made of the municipal demarcation process and the more than 100 forensic investigations into municipal maladministration and financial misconduct that have still not been resolved, more than a year after Minister Gordhan undertook to finalise them.

Van Rooyen will need to take a firm stance on traditional initiation procedures by addressing the ongoing deaths and injuries suffered by our young men, and he needs to provide direction to the government on the implementation of the Traditional and Khoisan Leadership Bill.

As Van Rooyen failed as Mayor of Merafong, was sacked after a weekend flutter as Finance Minister and has been a silent member on the Finance Portfolio Committee, we contend that he is not suitably qualified to be a Minister of any national department. 

South Africa’s municipalities need a firm hand to guide them. Unfortunately, Minister van Rooyen, who was chased out of Merafong and had his house burned down by service delivery protestors, cannot provide this. Minister van Rooyen has now been set up for failure by President Zuma once more.

The government’s previous attempts to address the systemic issues in local government – Project Consolidate, the Local Government Turnaround Strategy and Operation Clean Audit 2014 – were all spectacular failures. With the removal of Minister Gordhan it seems that the Back-to-Basics local government turnaround strategy is equally doomed.

The 2016 Local Government Election presents South Africa an opportunity to vote against poor ANC governance, and Jacob Zuma’s reckless handling of our economy and now his inappropriate appointment of van Rooyen to head up COGTA.

Where the DA governs, we will demonstrate what good municipal governance should look like. 

Issued by Kevin Mileham, Shadow Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, DA, 14 Decdember 2015