Shock report: No matric certificate for many KZN councillors

Lack of education among councillors at municipalities around the province was partly to blame for the failure of some municipalities to provide adequate services to their communities.

This was according to Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC, Nomusa Dube-Ncube, speaking at the delivery of the department’s budget speech in the KZN Legislature last Thursday.

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The MEC added that it was concerning that a large number of councillors had either no post-matric qualifications, or in some cases, no schooling at all.

“During the 2016 local government elections, of the 1 846 councillors in the province, only 322 were found to hold matric certificates, while 238 had no matric, and four had no schooling at all.”

As a result, she said, some municipalities were receiving poor audit reports because councillors were not properly equipped to read documents from municipal officials adequately and this often provided room for corruption to occur.

Some 16 municipalities across the province were currently being investigated for fraud and corruption, she said.

These include the former Ezinqoleni municipality, where a R35-million irregular expenditure probe is being finalised.

“Investigations at six of these municipalities are being finalised, while the rest are nearing completion,” the MEC said.

She also stressed that debt owed remained a problem, with more than R16-billion owed to municipalities in the province.

Some R5.1-billion is owed by ratepayers, while the balance is due by businesses and government departments.

After the MEC’s revelations, social media lit up, with many suggesting that matric be a minimum requirement for councillors, or that councillors should be paid on a sliding scale according to their qualifications.

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