By Craig Kotze
Organised business wants an urgent meeting with ELM’s new Municipal Manager to discuss both cooperation and critical revenue and service delivery issues, including the botched ending of the smart meter programme which has cost an estimated R120 million already.
Lucky Leseane was appointed full-time Municipal Manager of ELM from 1 February after a long series of unmitigated management and financial disasters presided over by an acting Municipal Manager, Dithaba Oupa Nkoane, over the past few years.
Leseane’s appointment comes against a background of wide-ranging efforts by national Government, ELM Executive Mayor Gift Moerane and organised business to develop strong stakeholder partnerships to turn around service delivery and economic development in the Vaal.
In this regard a progressive “Quad”consisting of Water and Sanitation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, Mayor Moerane, the Golden Triangle Chamber of Commerce (GTCoC) and waste water company ERWAT MD Tumelo Gopane have developed a policy and working framework for Vaal recovery.
Close working relationships have also developed with environmental watchdog SAVE and GTCoC Water and Sanitation spokesperson Rosemary Cloete-Anderson and Sisulu and her department along with Moerane and his Mayoral Office.
Decisively resolving the Emfuleni community and Vaal River sewage pollution crisis is widely seen as the key to underpin intensified service delivery and kick-starting economic development and investment in Gauteng’s poorest region.
Mayor Moerane is also expected to formally establish a Mayoral Business Forum soon to create an implementation working framework with organised business on service delivery and economic investment directly in the Vaal.
Sisulu – who visited the Vaal this week for the third time in as many weeks – has intervened personally to tighten pollution project time-lines and is widely seen as a game-changer who can vastly strengthen an enabling environment for Vaal recovery through initiatives such as declaring the region a disaster area.

Sisulu is also known to have a personal bond with the Vaal and owns property in Evaton and this week became the first national Minister to directly observe Vaal River sewage pollution and its destructive effects on tourism and the environment by taking a boat cruise from Stonehaven.

Leseane – who has studied at prestigious universities such as Harvard in the United States and Cambridge in the UK – will be confronted with what experts and business leaders say is the “grossly negligent scorched earth” mismanagement and short-sighted policies and inept service delivery by Nkoane.
Nkoane’s mismanagement of especially Emfuleni’s smart meter programme was even slammed in public by the Finance MEC of Gauteng Province – he is a Provincial deployee but became embroiled in massive irregular expenditure scandals on security contracts even as theft of municipal assets and sabotage of infrastructure increased dramatically.
Nkoane’s meter replacement policy has sparked an upsurge of illegal connections in especially areas where residents have maintained high payment rates for services and also ignited community resistance to both new pre-paid meters and hugely inaccurate estimate-based billing.
An ongoing Mooivaal Media investigation into Nkoane’s meter replacement process in areas such as Falcon Ridge in Vereeniging has revealed – according to experts familiar and close to the process – that at least 400 illegal connections have been made there alone.
GTCoC CEO Klippies Kritzinger said an urgent meeting with Leseane was now needed to discuss the way forward on municipal service delivery and governance especially the business sector.
Mayor Moerane has welcomed Leseane’s appointment.
Leseane, a graduate of Gauteng’s Wits University, has held various local government and private sector senior appointments, is a former Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Merafong District Municipality on Gauteng’s far West Rand.