The leader of the local DA branch has written to the MEC for Local Government, Mlibo Qoboshiyane, asking him to initiate a process to bring Makana Municipality under administration.
The leader of the local DA branch has written to the MEC for Local Government, Mlibo Qoboshiyane, asking him to initiate a process to bring Makana Municipality under administration.
This is a drastic but not unreasonable step in the light of the calamitous state of the municipality’s finances.
Last week, Rhodes University found itself obliged to advance money to the municipality so the latter could pay staff salaries.
Many local businesses are also under severe strain because the municipality has not paid its bills.
We don’t know why the municipality has run out of money less than halfway through the financial year. It could be a result of massive incompetence, poor governance or rampant corruption, but it is most probably a lethal concoction of all three facilitated by cadre deployment.
Taking the above into consideration, putting Makana under administration is certainly a good idea. But doing it through the Eastern Cape government is like asking the wolf to look after your sheep. The provincial administration is also in dire need of professionalisation and is hardly in any shape to put the Makana house in order.
The catastrophic financial situation is far from being the only major crisis facing Makana Municipality. The list of serious problems threatening the well-being of residents is far too extensive to include in this column but we should mention the unending series of water outages, frequent power cuts, poor state of the roads and generally filthy condition of the town.
The financial and service-delivery crises are mirrored in the similarly chaotic political mishmash entrusted with running this town. The mayoral committee was suddenly reshuffled without the knowledge of the ruling party’s regional committee on Monday.
This has provoked the wrath of the party bosses who are now threatening to remove the mayor from office and has deepened the rift between opposing factions in Council.
Two of the five director posts in the municipality are vacant and currently being filled by acting directors. There is no sign that either of these two critical posts will be filled in the near future.
For reasons unknown to us, the man who is occupying the office of the Municipal Manager has not signed a contract nor a performance agreement as required by law. In other words, the Makana Municipality does not have a valid contract with its own accounting officer.
The reason there are so many unanswered questions about the bumbling mess at the Makana City Hall is the ANC’s practice of cadre deployment. The ruling party uses the Makana budget and other resources to reward loyal members and service the short-term goals of the party.
This short-sighted, self-serving method of mismanagement is rapidly destroying the moral fibre and infrastructure of a municipality that could not only be viable, but could also thrive.
