Councillor Phillip Nothnagel of War 5, Emfuleni Local Council, writes:

It is quite clear that the Emfuleni Municipality (ELM), led by the ANC, is spiraling out of control and is on the verge of total collapse.  ELM has challenges around governance, financial management and service delivery. There are conflicts between top management and councilors, and allegations of political in-fighting and the municipality is beset with poor performance by top management, insufficient organizational structures, and vacancies. On the financial side, there is a lack of capacity and systems to effectively manage the financial resources especially on the income side. Service delivery is uneven, with lags between demand and supply, and high debt in the, municipality, resulting in insufficient spending on maintenance and frequent breakdowns. The Municipality faces major challenges around infrastructure and services delivery collapses, with disintegration of functions. The Municipality is financially at the point of total collapse. The DA and several loyal tax paying residents have lost all confidence in the Municipality. There seems to be a total breakdown of trust between communities and the ELM.

The municipality is in serious and persistent material breach of its obligations to provide basic services, meet its financial commitments and to adhere to the term’s conditions and timelines of the Financial Recovery plan, aimed at assisting the municipality to meet its obligations.

I want to start by supplying everybody with the basic background regarding Provincial intervention in local government in terms of Article 139 of the Constitution. When a Municipality cannot or does not fulfil and executive obligation in terms of the Constitution or legislation, as is the case with Emfuleni Municipality, the relevant Provincial Executive may intervene by taking any appropriate steps to ensure fulfilment of that obligation, including, dissolving the Municipal Council, and appointing an administrator until a newly elected Municipal Council has been declared elected. It needs to be known that ELM is now on its third administrator. Surely this is ELM’s last change to survive. Provincial government must intervene in a municipality “if a municipality, as a result of a crisis in its financial affairs, is in serious or persistent material breach of its obligations to provide basic services or to meet its financial commitments or admits that it is unable to meet its obligations or financial commitments.” The jurisdictional facts that should exist before provincial intervention are that the municipality must be in serious or persistent material breach of its obligations to, provide basic services or meet its financial commitments or that it is admit unable to meet the above.

It is quite clear that the present intervention in terms of Article 139(b) at ELM has failed and amounts to little more than window dressing.

I want to summarize by pointing out that: –

• The municipality is financially at the point of collapse,
• It is not meeting the targets set in the Financial Recovery plan especially relating to: –
  • The lack of service delivery
  • Ever increasing debt levels especially, the Eskom and Rand Water accounts
  • Late payment of creditors. Settlement of creditors takes 222 days instead of 30 days.
  • The municipalities spent little, or showed no spending at all, on repairs and maintenance, resulting in distribution losses and breakdowns of systems, or services not rendered.
• There are frequent findings around lack of, or poor performance of top management, insufficient organizational structures, and the existence of vacant posts in key management positions.
• There appears to be a lack of adequate systems and capacity to effectively manage financial resources and.
• The prevailing work culture seems to indicate: –
• a lack of leadership
• a total lack of accountability/responsibility
• a lack of consequence management
• a lack of ownership
• blame shifting
• a lack of the will to work. Several employees seem to concentrate on “being at work” rather than actually “working”

The time has come and gone where the Constitution and other Acts and regulations applicable to municipalities’ can no longer be ignored. The DA also believes that no municipal or government official is untouchable and that no officials should be allowed to do as they like, without facing sanctions. We insist that any official who misbehaved must be disciplined and that incompetent officials must be removed. Both municipal and government officials and politicians must be held accountable to the people.

The upcoming Municipal election at the end of the year will give us an opportunity to select suitable candidates to run our town. As citizens you can only blame yourself if you return to power, the very same councillors who have destroyed our town.

Thank you.

Phillip Nothnagel

Councillor Ward 5