Endumeni’s Mayor survives motion of no confidence vote
A marathon six-hour Council meeting today included a motion of no confidence in the Mayor.
Endumeni Mayor Siyabonga Ndlovu (IFP) escaped a motion of no confidence by a single vote during a marathon six-hour Council meeting today, Thursday, March 28.
The motion was lodged by ABC Councillor Mbulelo Phakathi (Ward 3) and supported by Councillor Amina Sadeck (Ward 2) of the ANC.
Phakathi said that as a public representative, ‘we must do something to turn around the financial paralysis that has gripped Endumeni Municipality since the mayor took office in November 2021’.
“The Auditor-General gave a damning report two months ago, where it was stated that the losses were nearly R100 million and that the institution is effectively bankrupt. Our constituents are demanding services and we have all seen how potholes have wrecked our roads, many streetlights are non-functional, and uncut verges are the norm,” Phakathi told the Courier.
“We have given the IFP, under Mayor Ndlovu, well over two years to lead the municipality to prosperity, but it has dived down.
“There is no interest in good governance and no commitment to a revenue collection programme to which all councillors have agreed.
“During the notorious load reduction saga of December 2022 (when Eskom cut Endumeni’s power due to non-payment), we swung into action by disconnecting defaulters and in a month we collected R20 million in outstanding service charges from businesses and residents. But sadly, we saw that the mayor was noncommittal to these efforts – hence the programme fell away.”
He said that the ‘war on potholes’, trumpeted by the mayor last year, has not been monitored and virtually come to a standstill, which has forced residents to carry out their repairs.
He said that the decision for the mayor to use official vehicles that are hired from rental companies, instead of using the mayoral vehicle used by the previous incumbent, is costing the council around R300,000 a month.
Phakathi claims that ‘procurement processes were not properly followed in the hiring of these vehicles’.
“There was an accident in a mayoral vehicle in 2022 and we have still not received any report.”
The DA’s Saleem Abdool, while giving Mayor Ndlovu a dressing down for his ‘incompetence and ineffective leadership’, said not all fingers could be pointed at him as the ‘municipality is a holiday camp with many officials not facing the consequences despite failings’. However, he said the DA did not want to be dictated to by the ANC and said they would ‘give Ndlovu another chance and he considers this to be the last escape’.
This sparked derision from the ANC with Cllr Mdluli saying he always ‘expected the IFP to fail so that’s no surprise’ but added that further failures (by Endumeni Municipality) ‘are at the door of the DA for supporting incompetence and a breakdown in service delivery’.
The motion failed to carry by 7 votes to 6.
It was also the long-serving Mdluli’s last Council meeting. The former Speaker and Endumeni Mayor has taken up a position in Pietermaritzburg and will be replaced by another ANC Councillor as he is a public representative Councillor rather than a ward Councillor.
See next week’s Courier for fuller details of the meeting.
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