Gauteng Province Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (GOGTA) MEC Lebogang Maile on Monday 8 June sent a letter to ELM Executive Mayor Gift Moerane announcing the take-over with immediate effect.

It is not yet known what the role of Mayor Moerane and newly-appointed Municipal Manager Lucky Leseane. ELM was expected to issue a media statement yesterday but this did not materialise by close of business.

The move can also result in unprecedented job-cutting at ELM, which will now be subject to a “review of organisational structure” – likely to be bitterly opposed by labour unions and formations such as MK Veterans who can and have brought the municipality to a standstill before.

According to the Maile letter, Mayor Moerane’s executive functions as well as the executive functions of elected Council itself are taken over by a COGTA Deputy-Director-General ,Willy Bhila, with immediate effect.

ELM is already under partial administration but Maile stopped short of declaring full administration which would have dissolved council and triggered elections under Covid-19 lockdown conditions.

Bhila will be assisted by an “eminent team“ of experts still to be appointed but extreme concern has already been expressed in business and political circles that two centres of power have de facto again been created at ELM, which recently appointed a permanent Municipal Manager.

Organised business has reacted cautiously to Maile’s move, with Klippies Kritzinger, CEO of the Golden Triangle Chamber of Commerce (GTCoC) saying only an assessment of the situation was being conducted.

Kritzinger did say he had already “reached out” to Bhila on a personal level but declined to comment further at this stage.

No mention was made in Maile’s letter – which is in the possession of Vaalweekblad – of any additional resources or even a formulated strategy from Gauteng Province to restore sound administration, revenue generation and service delivery.

However, Council itself was not dissolved as Maile had done with disastrous political and legal consequences in the Tshwane Council dissolution saga, thus possibly making ELM elected councillors a mere rubber stamp of Bhila and Gauteng Province.

The move, anticipated in political circles for some time but delayed by the Covid-19 crisis, was met with incredulity by political sources who noted previous COGTA deployees had already failed to turn ELM around.

“Far from sending a new team from Province to supposedly turn an ELM created mess around, this move is merely COGTA cleaning up its own self-inflicted crisis through the regime of its two previous officials imposed on the region,” said one political source.

Bhila is personally widely held in high regard by many Emfuleni stakeholders but informed sources said it was a “key mistake” for COGTA to “arrive with a long wish-list but no concrete plan that will now take at least six months to develop ”.

Known as the “Gang of Two”, former acting Municipal Manager Oupa Nkoane and present ELM CFO Andile Dyakala were originally sent to turn ELM around but instead presided over increased  administrative and billing chaos, destruction of key revenue streams, non-payment of service providers and lack of service delivery.

The two also engaged in constant and hugely expensive “lawfare” – a key concern raised in Maile’s letter – with business and service providers such as Eskom, and also destroyed ELM’s smart meter programme – a revenue money-spinner widely regarded as the best programme of its kind in Gauteng when terminated in June 2019 without any back-up plan whatsoever.

Dyakala has subsequently been appointed as the permanent CFO of ELM but Nkoane’s repeatedly-extended contract finally expired earlier this year.

Nkoane and Dyakala also reneged on ELM payments to Eskom last year and are also blamed for the present R2,3 billion ELM/Eskom debt crisis, also triggered by a second non-payment debacle earlier this year and still unresolved.